IRS Electronic Filing PIN Application Attacked by Malware

The IRS Electronic Filing PIN application was attacked by malware this week. The IRS posted the following on their News page:

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The IRS recently identified and halted an automated attack upon its Electronic Filing PIN application on IRS.gov. Using personal data stolen elsewhere outside the IRS, identity thieves used malware in an attempt to generate e-File PINs for stolen social security numbers. An e-file PIN is used in some instances to electronically file a tax return.

No personal taxpayer data was compromised or disclosed by IRS systems. The IRS also is taking immediate steps to notify affected taxpayers by mail that their personal information was used in an attempt to access the IRS application. The IRS is also protecting their accounts by marking them to protect against tax-related identity theft.

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.

Based on our review, we identified  unauthorized attempts involving approximately 464,000 unique SSNs, of which 101,000 SSNs were used to successfully access an e-File PIN.

The incident, involving an automated bot, occurred last month, and the IRS continues to closely monitor the web application.

This incident is not connected or related to last week’s outage of IRS tax processing systems.

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We will continue to monitor and update you as more information is released.

IRS Identity Protection PIN

The IRS is expanding the number of taxpayers who will receive an Identity Protection Pin (IP PIN) for the upcoming season. All taxpayers that have had an identity theft indicator applied to their IRS tax account will receive an IP PIN that must be included on their 2012 Federal income tax return. This means that approximately 600,000 taxpayers will receive an IP PIN for the upcoming filing season.

The affected taxpayers will receive their IP PIN in a notice (Notice CP01A) from the IRS in December 2012. This notice will include their 6-digit IP PIN and information on the use of the IP PIN.

If you know that any of your customers have been the victim of identity theft you may want to inform them that they will be receiving this notice in December. They will need to keep it and bring it in with the rest of their tax information when they come to have their 2012 income tax return prepared.

Other changes to the IP PIN program that you need to know:

• If the taxpayer was issued an IP PIN they must include it and have it entered correctly on their 2012 Federal return or the IRS will reject their return. The inclusion of the IP PIN will allow the return to be processed normally and will not delay their refund.
• If the taxpayer loses the notice that includes their IP PIN they can call the IRS Help Desk. Once they have authenticated who they are, they will be issued with a replacement IP PIN.
• Click here to read more.

Click here to read the entire CrossLink Tax Update that includes further information on the IRS Identity Protection PIN.