TurboTax’s Anti-Fraud Efforts Under Scrutiny

22nd February 2015
 
Two former security employees at Intuit — the makers of the popular tax preparation software and service TurboTax – allege that the company has made millions of dollars knowingly processing state and federal tax refunds filed by cybercriminals. Intuit says it leads the industry in voluntarily reporting suspicious returns, and that ultimately it is up to the Internal Revenue Service to develop industry-wide requirements for tax preparation firms to follow in their fight against the multi-billion dollar problem of tax refund fraud.
 
Last week, KrebsOnSecurity published an exclusive interview with Indu Kodukula, Intuit’s chief information security officer. Kodukula explained that customer password re-use was a major cause of a spike this tax season in fraudulent state tax refund requests. The increase in phony state refund requests prompted several state revenue departments to complain to their state attorneys general. In response, TurboTax temporarily halted all state filings while it investigated claims of a possible breach. The company resumed state filing shortly after that pause, saying it could find no evidence that customers’ TurboTax credentials had been stolen from its network.
 
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