Internal Revenue Service Website Hacked, 100,000 "Get Transcript" Information Stolen

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website was hacked losing 100,000 information of taxpayers. The information that was stolen includes tax returns and other tax-related information that has been filed by the IRS.

The IRS announced in their news website a detailed information regarding the hacking. The agency said that the hackers used the data of taxpayers such as Social Security number, tax filing status, date of birth, and even the address in order to gain access to the information that are filed under the "Get Transcript" application of the agency.

The agency added that the hackers worked on stealing the information from February to mid-May before successfully stealing the said information. IRS pointed out that the hackers tried to steal 200,000 information but ended up hacking only half of it. The IRS will then provide free credit monitoring services for the affected taxpayers and will also notify all the owners of the accounts that were hacked.

The third parties that did the suspicious actions were able to clear a multi-step authentication process that the website is equipped with. One of the steps that is required by the IRS is that an applicant must correctly answer several personal identity verification questions and the hackers were also able to get past this although the questions are typically known by the taxpayer only.

The IRS assured that the hackers were not able to hack the main computer system that has the tax filing submission and other important information so the citizens should not worry about that.

IRS is already working with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and their Criminal Investigation unit. As part of further precautionary steps, IRS also shut down the "Get Transcript" application now until further notice. The online application will remain inactive as IRS will have to modify this part of their website in order to strengthen security and avoid losing more data of taxpayers.

This is the first hack attack on IRS as it has been a very secure website for years. However, data security research groups noted that even the most secure systems are vulnerable to hacking.