IRS: 390K More Victims of IRS.Gov Weakness
Summary: The IRS revised its estimate of taxpayers whose data was stolen through its Get Transcript website weakness to at least 724,000, more than double the 334,000 it reported in August 2015 and far above the 110,000 it cited in May 2015. A nine-month review identified potential access to roughly 390,000 additional taxpayer accounts from January 2014 through May 2015, out of about 1.3 million abuse attempts in which thieves answered Equifax knowledge-based authentication questions correctly in 724,000 cases.
Bottom line: Thieves cleared the Equifax knowledge-based authentication questions more than half the time they tried, and the IRS's own fix - the Identity Protection PIN - can be retrieved through the same type of questions, with answers sometimes findable on Zillow and Facebook. One Oregon indictment alone alleges 2,900 false returns seeking over $25 million, of which $4.7 million was paid out.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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