irs – Network Securitas

March 7, 2016

IRS Suspends Insecure ‘Get IP PIN’ Feature

This post was originally published on this site Citing ongoing security concerns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has suspended a service offered via its Web site that allowed taxpayers to retrieve so-called IP Protection PINs (IP PINs), codes that the IRS has mailed to some 2.7 million taxpayers to help prevent those individuals from becoming victims of tax refund fraud two years in a row. The move comes just days after KrebsOnSecurity first exposed how ID thieves were abusing the service to revisit tax refund on innocent taxpayers two years running. Last week, this blog told the story of Becky Wittrock, […]

May 3, 2016

Fraudsters Steal Tax, Salary Data From ADP

This post was originally published on this siteIdentity thieves stole tax and salary data from payroll giant ADP by registering accounts in the names of employees at more than a dozen customer firms, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. ADP says the incidents occurred because the victim companies all mistakenly published sensitive ADP account information online that made those firms easy targets for tax fraudsters. Patterson, N.J.-based ADP provides payroll, tax and benefits administration for more than 640,000 companies. Last week, U.S. Bancorp (U.S. Bank) — the nation’s fifth-largest commercial bank — warned some of its employees that their W-2 data had been stolen […]

June 10, 2016

IRS Re-Enables ‘Get Transcript’ Feature

This post was originally published on this siteThe Internal Revenue Service has re-enabled a service on its Web site that allows taxpayers to get a copy of their previous year’s tax transcript. The renewed effort to beef up taxpayer authentication methods at irs.gov comes more than a year after the agency disabled the transcript service because tax refund fraudsters were using it to steal sensitive data on consumers. During the height of tax-filing season in 2015, KrebsOnSecurity warned that identity thieves involved in tax refund fraud with the IRS were using irs.gov’s “Get Transcript” feature to glean salary and personal information they […]

February 2, 2017

IRS: Scam Blends CEO Fraud, W-2 Phishing

This post was originally published on this siteMost regular readers here are familiar with CEO fraud — e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs the boss and tricks an employee at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudster. Loyal readers also have heard an earful about W-2 phishing, in which crooks impersonate the boss and request a copy of all employee tax forms. According to a new “urgent alert” issued by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, scammers are now combining both schemes and targeting a far broader range of organizations than ever before. The IRS said phishers are off to a much […]