this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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An email typo has reportedly sent millions of US military messages to Mali (www.engadget.com)
submitted 2 years ago by PopBobert@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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‘This risk is real and could be exploited by adversaries of the US,’ warned the Dutch whistleblower who discovered them.

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[–] deafboy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

More specifically, how does the .ml provider know the content of these messages? Do they just spoof MX for all unregistered domains, or did they specifically register the domain names mimicking the US military hostnames? Both scenarios seem sketchy.

[–] laylawashere44@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 years ago

It's described in the article. The Dutchman who runs the registrar for Mali first started to started to store the emails sent to these invalid addresses before being overwhelmed (and probably realising the literal minefield having US government secrets is) and stopping doing that. So yes his firm was initially intercepting messages sent to the aether by spoofing invalid addresses.