Sensitive US military documents on Ukraine war leaked via Minecraft Discord

Sensitive US military documents pertaining to the war in Ukraine were leaked in a Minecraft Discord server.

The leak contained information about the types of weapons used by Ukrainian and US forces, details on Ukraine's air defence systems and offensive capabilities, battlefield fatality statistics, and communication about US military allies.

As The Wall Street Journal reports (via Kotaku), the documents were uploaded to a small Discord server of American users, but later spread to a Minecraft Discord server in March before appearing on 4chan, Twitter, and Telegram.

Once a Russian propaganda account posted edited versions of the documents on Telegram, The Department of Defence began investigating.

50 leaked documents were classified as either "Top Secret" or "Secret".

As Kotaku reported, the documents appear to have been posted on to a Minecraft server during an argument about the game and the war in Ukraine, although context is missing due to the leaker's account and messages being deleted. Jokes about the Russian invasion upset a user who responded with leaked documents to prove the war was real.

Discord is now working with law enforcement investigating the leak.

"It is Discord's highest priority to ensure a safe experience for our users. When we are made aware of content that violates our policies, our Safety team investigates and takes the appropriate action, including banning users, shutting down servers, and engaging with law enforcement," a Discord spokesperson told Kotaku.

"Our dedicated Safety team uses a mix of proactive and reactive tools to keep activity that violates our policies off the service, including advanced technology like machine learning models, equipping and empowering community moderators to uphold our policies and Community Guidelines, and providing in-service reporting mechanisms. Our team also proactively takes additional measures based on wider platform trends or intelligence they receive."

Sensitive military information has previously been leaked in the forum for MMO combat game War Thunder on multiple occasions, most recently in January 2023.