FYI...

- http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/684
2008-02-20 - "The United States' tax-collecting agency, the Internal Revenue Service, warned security experts on Wednesday that fraudsters have increasingly targeted tax payers using phishing attacks that masquerade as messages from the IRS. Speaking at the Black Hat DC conference, a federal agent said that phishing activity has increased more than 12 fold over the last year. While the agency only had to deal with a single phishing site in each of 2003 and 2004, the IRS has closed down more than 1,630 sites to date..."

More on this...

- http://preview.tinyurl.com/328pot
February 20, 2008 (CNET news.com) - "...E-mails pretending to be from the IRS may link to phishing sites, but they can also launch malware, said Fried. He cited one example where late at night he saw a new IRS-themed e-mail containing malicious code and also found that none of the major antivirus sites had signatures in place to block the sample. He said the antivirus vendors frequently missed malware associated with IRS e-mail spam... In January 2008, Fried said that the IRS reached a full one percent of all spam traded on the Internet - a record for the agency. Fried also warned against using peer-to-peer applications on the same desktop with your tax information on it. He and his investigators will periodically fire up LimeWire and find hundreds of copies of people's tax returns available for downloading..."

More...

- http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=146485&print=true
FEBRUARY 20, 2008 - "...The IRS is seeing a wide range of attacks that have evolved from these early phishing efforts, Frieh said. In some cases, phishers pretend to be IRS investigators and demand users' personal information. In other cases, the user is presented with an online form that offers a tax refund that can be deposited directly to that user's debit account... Some phishers have expanded their IRS-related exploits to include "vishing" attacks that encourage users to give up personal information over the phone, Frieh said. The agency even has seen traditional 419 scams that ask the user to send money to a Gmail account, he said. Most of the exploits emanate from eastern Europe..."