The IRS announced that it identified and halted the attack, but the hackers successfully used 101,000 stolen SSNs to access E-file PINs. The IRS said the incident didn’t compromise or disclose any personal taxpayer data and reported that it quickly notified affected taxpayers by mail that their personal information had been used in the attempt. Also, the IRS said it would mark the affected taxpayers’ accounts to protect them against tax-related identity theft.
During the first week of February, the failure of IRS tax processing systems blocked the acceptance of many taxpayer returns. But the Service claimed that was unrelated to this attack.
March 2016
