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All is not OK in Oklahoma: State tax website victim of hack

28 January 2010

The website of the Oklahoma Tax Commission was the apparent victim of a hack yesterday, one in which visitors to the website were prompted to accept an Adobe license agreement and download software. The hack could not come a worse time for the Commission, whose site is undoubtedly experiencing an uptick in visitors as tax season approaches.

The hack of the Oklahoma Tax Commission website was brought to Infosecurity’s attention by Roger Thompson, chief researcher for security software provider AVG. In his blog posting this morning, Thompson warned about the pop-up Adobe license agreement that greeted visitors to the website. Apparently, code was waiting to infect the computer of any visitor who clicked on the agreement's “Accept” button.

“I expect that the web guys at OK Tax will remove the hacked html pretty quickly, but the bigger issue will be figuring out how the bad guys got in”, said Thompson. “These things happen to lots of people, but it’s unfortunate to happen to any tax site at this time of year.”

Regarding the nature of the attack, Thompson told Infosecurity that it is a “hacked site that is reaching out to a rotator in the Netherlands, which in turn calls out to an attack site. They use the rotator to decide where to direct the victim.”

Repeated attempts to contact the Oklahoma Tax Commission to confirm whether the website is still infected have gone unanswered. However, Thompson notes that “they've changed the script on the tax site since yesterday, so they must have steady access.”

 

This article is featured in:
Internet and Network Security Malware and Hardware Security Public Sector

 

Comments

OTC_Eng says:

01 February 2010
The Oklahoma Tax Commission website has been cleaned and is functioning correctly.

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