Tag: IRS

Cyber Attacks / Cyber Breach

IRS Student Loan Application Program Breach Affecting up to 100,000 Taxpayers

On April 6, 2017, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified during a Senate Finance Committee meeting that the personal data of up to 100,000 taxpayers may have been compromised by hackers accessing both students’ and parents’ tax information through the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT), a free application for federal student aid data retrieval connected with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Obtaining such information allowed these hackers to file fraudulent tax returns and steal refunds. The last breach of this magnitude occurred in 2015,… Continue Reading
Cyber Attacks / Cyber Breach / Cybercrime / Lawsuit

Hackers Charged with Stealing 1 Billion E-mail Addresses

The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed indictments against three hackers for having broken into eight email service providers (ESPs), stealing 1 billion email addresses and names, and receiving $2,000,000 for the sale of products to those email addresses through a “spam” sales scheme. According to the indictments filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Canadian David-Manuel Santos Da Silva and Viet Quoc Nguyen and Giang Hoang Vu from Vietnam used an email phishing scheme beginning in 2009 to gain… Continue Reading