Friday, September 5, 2008
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has found more than 1,500 unauthorized web servers on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) network, leaving systems vulnerable to attack from hackers.
In September 2007, the group ran network security checks on the servers attached to its system and found that of those identified as having vulnerabilities, 87 per cent were not listed on its internal database.
"Unauthorized servers pose a greater risk because the IRS has no way to ensure that they will be continually configured in accordance with security standards and patched when new vulnerabilities are identified," TIGTA wrote in the report.
Follow-up tests conducted in March found that of the 2,093 servers examined, 437 had high-risk network security vulnerabilities.
To rectify the problem, the report urged network security teams at the IRS to take control of web registration programs in order to block unauthorized access.
In other developments, earlier this year TIGTA conducted an IRS tax forum presentation to alert employees to the risk that phishing scams pose to tax professionals.
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