Sensitive U.S. military information has been sent to Mali for years thanks to a simple typo

Corporate image of hands typing on a laptop keyboard in an outdoor environment, perhaps a balcony, a garden or a rooftop terrace. (Credit: Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images)

A simple typo means millions of emails meant for the U.S. military are about to fall into the hands of Mali, a pro-Russia state in West Africa, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

The so-called “typo leak” is the result of people misspelling the suffix used at the end of all U.S. military email addresses: while the military uses .MIL, the country identifier for Mali is .ML.