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Thieves steal tax data for 100,000 from an IRS website
You might need to keep a closer eye than usual on your tax-related info. The Internal Revenue Service is warning that intruders stole tax data for 100,000 people between February and May by taking advantage of a flaw in the agency's transcript website. The evildoers successfully circumvented a security check that asks for static info like your Social Security number and tax filing status. The IRS is temporarily shutting down transcripts and says that its main servers are safe, but this could lead to the culprits filing for bogus tax refunds and getting victims in trouble.
IRS tastes its own medicine, will pay Microsoft millions for Windows XP support
Usually, the Internal Revenue Service is the one getting paid this time of year, but Uncle Sam will be lining someone else's pockets this tax season because of its attachment to Windows XP. In case you hadn't heard, support for XP officially stopped on April 8th, meaning that Microsoft will no longer provide support or security updates for the venerable OS. However, governmental computers can't be left vulnerable, so the IRS will be paying Microsoft millions of dollars for custom support to keep their machines secure and functional. Right now, over half the agency's PCs still run XP, despite Microsoft telling the whole world that it would stop support for the OS in 2014 six years ago. The plan is to have all IRS machines running Windows 7 by the end of the year -- at which point the clock starts ticking on the transition to Windows 8. No rush, though, Microsoft has pledged to support Windows 7 through 2020. Let the governmental procrastination begin! [Image Credit: Alamy]
IRS employee uses Outlook rules to intercept boss's e-mails, convicted of wiretapping
Here's an interesting question for you: if you set up a rule in Microsoft Outlook to forward messages from one account to another, and you do it without the knowledge of the owner of the account you're forwarding from, are you intercepting or merely copying mail? It may seem like a moot point, but for David Szymuszkiewicz, a former IRS worker, it's an important distinction. David was afraid of being fired after his license was suspended for drunk driving (he needed to drive to the homes of delinquent taxpayers), so he secretly set up this rule on his boss's machine to see what the world was saying about him. The rule was discovered and, wouldn't you know it, he was in trouble. The only question now: whether to charge him under the Wiretap Act for intercepting messages or the Stored Communications Act for merely copying of them. So, what was your answer to the question above? You might be tempted to say he was simply making a copy, and indeed that was Szymuszkiewicz's argument, but any Exchange admin will tell you that Outlook rules are executed on the server, not at the client, meaning those e-mails were indeed being intercepted. Szymuszkiewicz was convicted of wiretapping but seems to have avoided a harsh sentence, with 18 months probation being handed down. A light punishment for wiretapping, but a heavy one for diddling menus in Outlook.
