IRS says identity thieves nabbed 100,000 income tax e-file PINs

Tax season is a busy time for the Internal Revenue Service, and identity thieves are only making it worse. The IRS confirmed that hackers used stolen social security numbers automated malware to generate over 100,000 e-file (electronic filing) PINs before the department but the clamps on the attack last week. Thieves were actually after 464,000 of the numbers, but were stopped about a quarter of the way through.

The e-file PINs are used to file returns, well, electronically. Doing so would allow the perpetrators to file bogus returns and collect any potential refunds. The IRS says no taxpayer info was accessed as part of the intrusion, but it's notifying people if their social security number was used to obtain a PIN. What's more, this attack wasn't related to the recent IRS e-file system outage.