Sensitive US military emails spill online
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe U.S. Department of Defense secured an exposed server on Monday that was spilling internal U.S. military emails to the open internet for the past two weeks.
The exposed server was hosted on Microsoft’s Azure government cloud for Department of Defense customers, which uses servers that are physically separated from other commercial customers and as such can be used to share sensitive but unclassified government data. The exposed server was part of an internal mailbox system storing about three terabytes of internal military emails, many pertaining to U.S. Special Operations Command, or USSOCOM, the U.S. military unit tasked with conducting special military operations.
But a misconfiguration left the server without a password, allowing anyone on the internet access to the sensitive mailbox data inside using only a web browser, just by knowing its IP address.
The server was packed with internal military email messages, dating back years, some of which contained sensitive personnel information. One of the exposed files included a completed SF-86 questionnaire, which are filled out by federal employees seeking a security clearance and contain highly sensitive personal and health information for vetting individuals before they are cleared to handle classified information. These personnel questionnaires contain a significant amount of background information on security clearance holders valuable to foreign adversaries. In 2015, suspected Chinese hackers stole millions of sensitive background check files of government employees who sought security clearance in a data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
According to a listing on Shodan, a search engine that crawls the web for exposed systems and databases, the mailbox server was first detected as spilling data on February 8. It’s not clear how the mailbox data became exposed to the public internet, but it’s likely due to a misconfiguration caused by human error.
USSOCOM spokesperson Ken McGraw said in an email on Tuesday that an investigation, which began Monday, is under way. ‘We can confirm at this point is no one hacked U.S. Special Operations Command’s information systems,’ said McGraw.
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Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/21/sensitive-united-states-military-emails-spill-online/
Ref: techcrunch
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