IRS
says cyberattacks more extensive than previously thought
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[August 18, 2015]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said Monday a hacking attack into one of
its computer databases revealed in May was much more extensive than
previously thought, with nearly three times as many taxpayers hit by
data theft.
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The IRS said in late May the tax return information of about
114,000 U.S. taxpayers had been illegally accessed by cyber
criminals over the preceding four months, with another 111,000
unsuccessful attempts made.
A new review has identified 220,000 additional incidents where data
was breached, the tax collection agency said. It identified another
170,000 suspected failed attempts by third parties to gain access to
taxpayer data.
The attackers sought to gain access to personal tax information
through the agency's "Get Transcript" online application, which
allowed taxpayers to call up information from previous returns. The
system was shut down after the May attacks.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Aug/18/images/ads/current/farmers_bank_sda_prom_050614.png) "The IRS believes some of this information may have been gathered
for potentially filing fraudulent tax returns during the upcoming
2016 filing season," the agency said in a statement.
It added that it will soon begin mailing letters in the next few
days to the taxpayers whose accounts may have been accessed,
offering them free credit monitoring and a new personal
identification number to verify the authenticity of next year's tax
returns.
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In May, the agency said that as a result of the breach, some 15,000
fraudulent returns were processed in the 2015 tax filing season,
likely resulting in refunds of less than $50 million.
An IRS official said the agency was reviewing whether the number of
fraudulent returns had grown due to the more extensive data
breaches, but that requires a manual review of the individual
returns.
(Reporting by David Lawder, Emily Stephenson and Sandra Maler;
Editing by Bernadette Baum and Sandra Maler)
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