[Year 12 IT Apps] Data security U4O2 - The bigger they are, the harder they fail

[Mark]

"On Tuesday the [U.S. tax office] IRS admitted that it had been the target
of a breach that compromised 100,000 taxpayers’ files between February and
the middle of this month. And though that may seem like a relatively small
set of victims compared with recent breaches like the one affecting Target
or the health insurer Anthem, the IRS says the attackers gained the full
tax return transcript of the affected taxpayers, which could included a
detailed dossier of their personal information including income and social
security numbers. And that may have been enough to pull off a
tax-refund-stealing scheme first reported in March.

"Just as disturbing than the information stolen, in fact, may be the intel
the attackers appear to have possessed about their targets before the
breach. According to the IRS statement, the attackers used a collection of
detailed personal information from another “non-IRS” source to crack the
authentication process on a “get transcript” feature on the IRS website."

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/hackers-hit-irs-access-100000-taxpayers-files/

-- 

>> Witty sig goes HERE <<

Mark Kelly

http://vceit.com
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