IRS Reveals Details on Recent Automated Attack Attempting to Generate 400K E-filing PINs

It's about that time of year again, time to settle on a tax amount owed to you from Uncle Sam or, in the case of those less fortunate, pay up taxes that are due. It's also the time of year that hackers and cybercrooks to start to seek out victims by leveraging the IRS tax season, which they have already had a jump on the idea by attempting to generate over 400,000 E-filing PINs through a cyberattack last month.

The IRS has been a rather large target for hackers and cybercrooks around the world. Ever since the IRS made it possible to file your taxes through the Internet cybercrooks have found methods to exploit transmitted data or victimize unsuspecting computer users through spam messages or phishing sites.

Reported through an IRS statement released this week, the agency is saying that an unknown perpetrator initiated an attack that turned out to abuse the E-filing PIN generator. The unknown attacker attempted to feed the form with over 464,000 Social Security numbers to get E-filing PINs. The attack resulted in the perpetrator making away with PINs for about 101,000 Social Security Numbers.

The important aspect of the IRS automated attack is that no taxpayer data was actually compromised. The IRS said in their statement this week, "IRS cybersecurity experts are currently assessing the situation, and the IRS is working closely with other agencies and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IRS also is sharing information with its Security Summit state and industry partners."

Officials at the IRS believe that the automated bot that initiated the attack may have been involved used Social Security numbers from other attacks that made off with SSNs from data heists on systems belonging to other companies around the world. Such a practice isn't out of the ordinary as hijacked data is often sold on the internet, mostly on the Dark Web where cybercrooks go to seek out just enough information to initiate their next cyber attack.

Unfortunately, the recent attack on the IRS isn't the first time such an incident has taken place. The IRS is constantly under attack from clever cybercrooks. The only time we ever get wind of such attacks is when the attackers are successful in some capacity.

While the IRS is quick to verify that no taxpayer data from its own servers was compromised during the attack, the IRS is making clear that the attack was not related to a recent outage the service faced last week. Additionally, all individuals whose SSNs were used to test on the E-filing system to generate PINs will have their account marked to protect them from any future tax-related identity theft. They will also get notifications by ground mail from the IRS explaining the incident, so there are no stones left unturned.