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HELLO, IRS? I'M FROM THE NIGERIAN BUREAU OF IDENTITY THEFT...

March 17, 2005

The IRS is known for its hardware and software problems, but it needs to work out a few kinks in the wetware, too:

While computer systems have become more secure at the IRS, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that IRS employees remain open to manipulation by hackers.

TIGTA personnel posing as information technology helpdesk personnel called 100 managers and other employees and duped 35 of them into providing their login names and changing their passwords to ones suggested by the callers.

A “hacker or disgruntled employee” could use those “social engineering techniques” to obtain unauthorized access to IRS systems, according to TIGTA.

I need to email these folks about my deceased uncle, the rightful President of Nigeria...

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