The misdirected emails have grown less frequent in recent years, but still come by the hundreds per day, Zuurbier said. Tim Gorman said in a statement to CNN earlier on Monday. “The Department of Defense (DoD) is aware of this issue and takes all unauthorized disclosures of Controlled National Security Information or Controlled Unclassified Information seriously,” Lt. The department strongly discourages using personal email accounts for official business, Singh said. She added that the “only thing that went through” were emails from personal accounts, like a Gmail or Yahoo account. ml email addresses as a precaution, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Monday. None of the leaked emails were sent from official Department of Defense email addresses, but the department has blocked its email accounts from emailing. ML domain expired last week, he said, prompting him to raise awareness of the issue in the media. “Yes, I was concerned, still am!” Zuurbier said in an email to CNN when asked about possible security risks and the misdirected emails. officials, including the US Embassy in Mali earlier this year. Since 2013, Zuurbier said, he has raised the issue with various U.S. Johannes “Joost” Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur, received the emails because his company was contracted to manage the. The Financial Times first reported on the issue.

The personal information in the emails could be used to conduct targeted cyberattacks or to track the movements of Pentagon personnel – although there’s no evidence that happened in this case. The email mishap reveals the security risks to US national security officials that can arise from an innocent typo. ML domain, which handles email accounts in the West African country of Mali. military – but because of typos they were instead sent to the. The emails were intended for owners of “.MIL” email accounts – the internet domain owned by the U.S. In some cases, sensitive information like hotel reservations for senior US military officials were revealed. military’s email address and the domain for the West African country, according to a Dutch technologist who discovered the problem. Millions of emails intended for Pentagon employees were inadvertently sent to email accounts in Mali over the last decade because of typos caused by the similarity of the U.S.

Typo string lights