"Pentagon Notifies 20,000 of 2023 Cloud Email Data Breach"
The US Department of Defense is notifying 20,600 individuals of a data breach after an unsecured US government cloud email server, hosted on Microsoft's cloud, exposed sensitive emails to the internet without a password due to misconfiguration. The breach, which occurred between February 3 and February 20, 2023, led to the exposure of personal information and sensitive military emails, including those related to US Special Operations Command. The server was secured on February 20, 2023, after a security researcher discovered the breach and reported it to the US government.