The country led by Assimi Goïta is preparing to recover thousands of American emails addressed to the Pentagon from several areas of domestic life in the United States spanning 10 years. A news that does not reassure American internal security. Especially when you know that Mali, in its aim to turn away from the negative influence of the West, has forged very close ties with Russia and Vladimir Putin.
A “typo” as a starting point
In the IT field, and specifically on the Internet, each country has its own extension domain. In the case of Mali, this domain is “.ml”. For the sake of security and discretion, the US military, the pioneer of the Internet in the world, has its own extension domain which “.mil”, different from the extension domain of the country.
Presumably, it is the typo, with the omission of the i in the writing of the domain extension that created all this confusion. It was the Financial Times newspaper which made this revelation on Monday 17 July.
Full powers in Mali
However, it is important to note that during the last ten years, it was not Mali that managed its extension domain. Indeed, the management was entrusted to a Dutch entrepreneur, Johannes Zuurbier, in 2013, for a period of 10 years. During all these years, the latter intercepted nearly 117,000 messages, per the Financial Times.
Johannes Zuurbier’s contract ended on Monday, July 17 and it was the Malian army which regained control of the extension domain. If it is not at first sight messages classified as top secret, nonetheless very sensitive information for American personnel in service, subcontractors and their families. These emails, among other, relate to medical records, identity documents, ship crew lists, base personnel lists and pictures, facilities maps, naval inspection reports, contracts, criminal complaints against staff, internal bullying investigations, travel itineraries, tax and financial records.
A flow of information interesting to potential enemies of the United States. But also info which would place Mali on a pedestal in terms of possessing strategic information from the United States.
Clearly, with the Malian government taking control of the domain extension, the Pentagon will be forced to take this thorny problem seriously. But after 10 years of capture, it will not be easy to close the breach immediately. This puts Mali in a position of strength in this affair.
