UK accidentally sent US-bound military emails to a Russian ally

British authorities launched an investigation after officials mistakenly sent emails intended for US military intelligence to the government of Mali, a Russian ally.

Officials from the UK Ministry of Defense were supposed to send emails to the Pentagon but accidentally sent them to the Mali government, according to the Times. reported Thursday. The error was the result of a typo, as the Pentagon’s domain name is “.mil” while Mali’s is “.ml”.

The Ministry of Defense saying On Friday they were investigating the incident.

“We have opened an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly forwarded to the wrong email domain,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters. reported.

According to the Times, while most of the emails sent to Mali were innocuous, containing information such as the dates Foreign Office employees were on vacation, others contained “detailed descriptions” of the British missile investigation. hypersonic.

However, the Defense Ministry said the Times’s claims were misleading.

“This report misleadingly claims that state secrets were sent to Mali’s email domain. We assessed that less than 20 routine emails were sent to a wrong domain and we are confident that there was no breach of operational security or disclosure of technical data,” the ministry said. saying Friday. “There is an ongoing investigation. Emails of this type are not classified as top secret or top.”

According to Reuters, the spokesperson said that all sensitive information is shared “in systems designed to minimize the risk of diversion.”

“MOD is constantly reviewing its processes and is currently undertaking a work program to improve information management, data loss prevention, and control of sensitive information,” they said.

Earlier this month, a investigation by the Financial Times discovered that millions of emails destined for the Pentagon were sent to Mali as a result of the same typo. Some of these emails included confidential information, such as diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and travel details of the officers, the investigation found.