British Factory Worker Received Sensitive U.S. E-mails by Mistake

A British factory worker has shut down a tourism site he owned at the request of the U.S. air force after he received thousands of e-mails sent to his domain that were meant for military personnel -- among them e-mails with flight plans for Air Force One, the U.S. presidential plane, as well as passwords and military procedures and tactics, according to the BBC.

The news reports about this, if true, leave a lot of questions unanswered -- such as why this information was even being sent over the internet, and unencrypted at that? And how is it possible that this continued for more than seven years before anyone took action?

Gary Sinnott launched a tourism web site in the late 90s to promote his tiny town of Mildenhall (www.mildenhall.com) in Suffolk. Unfortunately, the domain name was a bit too similar to the domain belonging to the Royal Air Force base at Mildenhall (www.mildenhall.af.mil), which is controlled by the U.S. Air Force and houses a number of U.S. squadrons and wings -- among them the refueling wing for U.S. and NATO aircraft traveling in and through Europe.

src blog.wired.com...

Wow just wow. The level of incompetence is astounding given the duties and responsibilities these people perform. This should be considered grade school knowledge these days. No wonder the military is inundated with hacks, breaches and the like. The sad part is this can prevented very easily. Shouldn't so called professionals be tested on procedures and at the very least periodically screened to ensure confidential data is kept that way.

brill