Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, July 17 (Xinhua)-- millions of emails related to the US military have been sent to the West African country of Mali due to a spelling mistake, the Financial Times reported. This has been going on for more than a decade, and a Dutch entrepreneur has repeatedly tried to warn the US government, but it has not been taken seriously.

The entrepreneur's name is Johnannes Zulbier, and he is the administrator of the Malian domain name. He found that many people accidentally wrote the suffix .ML (the country identifier of Mali) instead of the correct .MIL (the domain name of the US military) when sending e-mails to the US military. Zulbier set up a system to intercept these missent emails, but the system was soon overwhelmed and stopped working. Since January this year alone, Zulbier has intercepted 117000 missent emails, which contain some confidential information about the US military, according to the Financial Times.

CTOnews.com noted that this information related to medical records, identity documents, lists and photographs of personnel at military bases, naval inspection reports, crew lists, tax records, etc. The senders of these emails include military personnel, travel agencies working for the US military, US intelligence agencies, private contractors and so on. For example, the Financial Times reported that earlier this year, there was an email containing the itinerary of US Army Chief of staff General James McConvier's visit to Indonesia, including the "list of room numbers of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta" and "details of General McConville's collection of room keys".

However, Zulbier will soon be unable to intercept the emails because his 10-year contract with Mali expires on Monday, when the Malian authorities will be able to access them.

"the Department of Defense (DoD) is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorized disclosure of controlled national security information or controlled non-confidential information seriously," Tim Gorman, a Defense Department spokesman, told The Verge in an emailed statement. He added that emails sent from the .MIL domain name to Mali "will be blocked" and "the sender will be notified to verify the recipient's email address." He admitted that this did not prevent other government agencies or people working with the United States government from mistakenly sending e-mails to Malian addresses. However, he noted, "the Ministry of Defense continues to provide guidance and training to DoD personnel."

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.