

30 billion dollar hack - dsr_
http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack

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quanticle
Does anyone have corroboration? I mean, Cringely has a history of overstating
his claims, and this story is _very_ thinly sourced. The only evidence that
Cringely presents is the one Wall Street Journal article that is, by his own
admission, inadequate to support his claims.

Further, he presents the existence of Form 14039 as further evidence of
massive tax fraud without any indication that correlation in this case is due
to causation. I mean, on the basis of this article alone, I have no reason to
conclude that the IRS introduced this form for the purposes of addressing or
covering up this fraud. In fact, a much more likely scenario is that identity
theft is now so common, the IRS has formalized its procedures for dealing with
it by creating a new tax form. Finally, I don't see any of the "draconian
policy changes" that he's referring to on the horizon.

This entire article just strikes me as somehow... _wrong_. There are just too
many conclusions being drawn off one piece of very weak evidence for me to
give it any credence.

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whatusername
Since the site is dead, here's the text from my RSS Reader:

The $30 billion Social Security hack

\--------------------

Sometime last year computers at the U.S. Social Security Administration were
hacked and the identities of millions of Americans were compromised. What, you
didn’t hear about that? Nobody did.

The extent of damage is only just now coming to light in the form of millions
of false 2011 income tax returns filed in the names of people currently
receiving Social Security benefits. That includes a very large number of
elderly and disabled people who are ill-equipped to recognize or fight the
problem. It’s an impact pervasive enough that the IRS now has a form just to
deal with it: Form 14039: Identity Theft Affidavit, December 2011.

The Wall $treet Journal has a story about this problem specific to Puerto
Rico, but the Journal fails to mention that this is a national problem — a
$30+ billion problem.

The story is going public now because tax season is upon us and there’s no way
to keep it under wraps as people file their tax returns only to learn that a
return under that name has already been filed with refunds paid electronically
into a bank account now closed. The December date on that IRS Form 14039 shows
the Treasury has been expecting this for awhile.

The question being asked about this in Washington, DC today is whether this
hack was an act of war? More likely an act of Tony Soprano, I’d say. If the
goal of war is to sow confusion and discontent, then okay, maybe China or Iran
are behind this (you don’t have to be a superpower to take on the U.S.
government anymore). But the more probable goal is simply to steal money and
that’s a domestic job.

Either way, that big hacker score guys like me have been predicting for
several years has finally happened with draconian policy changes sure to
follow. Lucky us.

WSJ Link (mentioned in the article):
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230340470457730...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577309854181227634.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories#printMode)

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bigiain
Ouch. If this is true (and I find it a little unlikely, given the lack of
corroborating evidence so far), it's gonna be _big._

Props to Cringely if he's breaking something amazing here…

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bjornsing
Is the $30 billion number substantiated anywhere in any way?

All I can find is WSJ saying "$2 billion", "$7 billion" and "$14 billion" with
no reference to this specific hack...

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zitterbewegung
China is going to try to tank an economy that its holding a bunch of debt of?
Or hurt the confidence in that same economy?

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ajays
Anybody have a mirror? The site's dead.

~~~
EvilTerran
It seems to be back up now, but have this CoralCDN
(<http://www.coralcdn.org/>) link in case it goes down again:

[http://www.cringely.com.nyud.net/2012/03/the-30-billion-
hack...](http://www.cringely.com.nyud.net/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/)

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lifeisstillgood
To me it's the plausibility that matters even if this is not real ( the fraud
is clearly real and probably not rare, the scale is the thing at issue) even
if it's not real, there is little to suppose it cannot be real. Social
security numbers are / used to be a simplettransposition of date of birth iirr

it's how do we prevent such frauds - and if we do it's still a clever dos
attack on the IRS. 10 million fraudulent tax returns. How do you deal with
that except manual review?

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jasonwatkinspdx
Looks legit.

