WASHINGTON -- At the heart of the U.S. Government's ability to raise funds is the Internal Revenue Service. It stands to reason that hackers find it a useful target.

During a keynote address before a capacity crowd at the Black Hat security conference here, Treasury Department Special Agent Andy Fried discussed in general terms how the IRS is being attacked and what it's doing about it.

But first, a little history. The first IRS phishing site appeared in 2003, the second in 2004, he noted. Both were quickly shuttered. Today, IRS estimates that over 1600 IRS phishing sites are operating or online at any given time, just looking for potential victims to hand over sensitive data about themselves.

In addition to phishing attempts, Fried noted that the IRS has tracked incidents in which citizens received pretexting calls -- as in a call on a pretext of someone claiming to be from the IRS.

Then there are the eFile and Tax rebate scams that fraudsters try out with the help of spoofed e-mail. "None of the IRS scams are overly successful," Fried noted.

But don't forget about the relative value of money in all these attempts to fool customers into turning over their financial data, he continued. For some phishers, especially those working offshore, the money they can steal from one person's data is greater than what they could earn in their home country in a month.

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