Security News > 2021 > March > Scammers target universities in ongoing IRS phishing attacks
The Internal Revenue Service is warning of ongoing phishing attacks impersonating the IRS and targeting educational institutions.
"The phishing emails appear to target university and college students from both public and private, profit and non-profit institutions," the US revenue service warned.
These phishing messages use "Tax Refund Payment" or "Recalculation of your tax refund payment" subject lines to attract the targets' attention and increase the phishers' social engineering attacks' success rates.
After landing on the phishing pages, the targets are then prompted to fill out a form with sensitive personal information, which the attackers can later use to commit fraud.
Electronic Filing PIN. "This impersonation is especially convincing as the attacker's landing page is identical to the IRS website including the popup alert that states' THIS US GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IS FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY', a statement that also appears on the legitimate IRS website," Abnormal Security revealed.
Last year, aggressive scammers also impersonated the IRS in emails threatening targets with arrest warrants and legal charges unless they paid fake outstanding amounts related to late or missed payments.
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