I’m confused, so he identifies this problem ten years ago but only just now raised an alarm as his contract was due to be up on Monday?
According to the Financial Times, which first reported the story, Dutch internet entrepreneur Johannes Zuurbier identified the problem more than 10 years ago.
Since 2013, he has had a contract to manage Mali’s country domain and, in recent months, has reportedly collected tens of thousands of misdirected emails.
None were marked as classified, but, according to the newspaper, they included medical data, maps of US military facilities, financial records and the planning documents for official trips as well as some diplomatic messages.
Mr Zuurbier wrote a letter to US officials this month to raise the alarm. He said that his contract with the Mali government was due to finish soon, meaning “the risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US”.
Mali’s military government was due to take control of the domain on Monday.
Why the military doesn’t filter emails being sent to an unfriendly foreign nation is beyond me. My company would restrict my account if I began emailing a random .ml domain with attatchments.
I’m assuming this doesn’t involve intra-military emails, because that would be trivial to prevent. It’s probably because of people sending from another domain. Like if maverick@gmail.com is sending an email to iceman@navy.mil, but he mistypes the .mil part because he is using his iPhone while riding his motorcycle with a girl on the back.
A more realistic example would be ceo@lockheed.com sending an email to commander@af.mil to discuss some upcoming meeting about a new aircraft contract.
Lmao this is such a clown show. As a infosec professional I would have been fired so long ago in the private sector for allowing stupidity to get this far with regards to critical data leakage. As another user pointed out, we have had the technology for decades to prevent this kind of thing, but apparently the geriatrics at the DOD haven’t figured it out yet. Bunch of clowns with their CEH looking at each other for instruction.
Hopefully that mistake was not too expensive…
I’m a little confused about a comment in the article that says the Mali military will be taking over the .ml domain on Monday. Is the country of Mali going to start using a different domain next week?
I read it as the military is taking it over and controlling the internet/domain over there and not that .ml will only be for mali military.
It’s “mail”, not “mali”, ya military dummies! /jk
I don’t even have a job, but I can definitely proofread!
