IRS hacking worse than first thought

3 months ago the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) acknowledged that hackers used the “get transcript" software to steal personal data. At the time it was thought that the attack was limited to 114,000 people Since that time it has become apparent that the breach was more extensive than first thought.

Here we have a case where a successful authentication-based attack was discovered in May, and yet the IRS is still unclear of the extent of the breach’s damage months later. Even now, how confident is the IRS they fully understand the extent of the attack completely, or should we expect yet another shoe to drop in the coming weeks?” said Jeff Hill of STEALTHbits Technologies, a cyber security company.

On Monday that assessment was upped by 220,000 individuals to 334,000 that could be in danger of having their taxes information compromised. Just how much of the personal information was compromised is still not known. The IRS though is going by the assumption that the damage is severe enough that the hackers could file fraudulent returns to claim bogus refunds.

In a statement the agency said, "as part of the IRS's continued efforts to protect taxpayer data, the IRS conducted a deeper analysis over a wider time period covering the 2015 filing season, analyzing more than 23 million uses of the Get Transcript system."

The IRS is sending out letters to all of the people that could have been victims of the attack. The letter will inform them the government will provide them with a year of identity theft protection. There will most likely be some steps that the letter recipient will need to take but that will all be outlined in the letter.