Harvard Pilgrim has revealed that April’s ransomware attack impacted more than 2.5 million people. Yahoo! US; Politics; World; COVID-19; Climate Change; Health; Science; Origina …
Watch out! Tax-filing platform eFile.com got caught red-handed spreading malware to unsuspecting users, according to cybersecurity investigators (h/t Bleeping Computer).
Adding salt to injury, eFile.com is touted as a free, IRS-approved tax-filing service provider, giving users a false sense of security. As it turns out, researchers discovered that eFile.com hosted a malicious JavaScript file on its website for weeks.
Authenticating the researchers’ findings, Bleeping Computer said that it, too, spotted the aforementioned malicious JavaScript file across eFile.com’s webpages. The ill-intentioned file in question is called “popper.js.”
What did it do? Well, according to PCWorld, it loaded a legitimate-looking faux error page instructing users to install a browser update. But of course, it’s not a real browser update — it’s a trojan designed to deliver your PC a gnarly serving of malware (a Windows-based botnet attack, to be specific).
The issue was present on eFile.com since March 17, according to Johannes Ullrich, a security researcher from SANS Technology Institute. Ullrich added that only two malware scanners flagged the malware: Crowdstrike Falcon and Cynet.
It’s worth noting that eFile.com was reportedly hijacked two weeks ago, according to security research group MalwareHunterTeam (MHT). But that’s no excuse; MHT is still putting its foot on eFile.com’s neck for not sweeping out the mess.
“So, the website of (efile[.]com), ‘is an IRS authorized e-file provider’ got compromised at least around middle of March & still not cleaned,” MalwareHunterTeam tweeted on April 3.
As of this writing, eFile.com has not released a statement about the malware findings discovered on its website. The moral of the story? Stick to TurboTax and H&R Block.
Tyler Technologies, a major seller of government software, announced last week a new five-year contract with the Texas court system to run its electronic filing services.
The agreement, worth $98 million, is the largest in Tyler’s corporate history, and will keep the company as the e-filing vendor for criminal and civil courts across all of Texas’ 254 counties through at least 2027. The Texas Office of Court Administration has partnered with Tyler since 2012, when the state first implemented its e-filing requirements, which went statewide for civil cases in 2015 and for criminal proceedings in 2019.
Tyler’s initial contract was due to expire in 2022. The five-year agreement announced last week also includes an option to extend the e-filing system another five years through 2032.
Since Texas required electronic filing in all cases, the Office of Court Administration says it has reduced paper waste by about 420 million sheets, according to a press release.
““Electronic filing has been key to the Texas Judiciary’s ability to overcome disasters from hurricanes, to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to a ransomware attack,” David Slayton, the Office of Courts Administration’s administrative director, said in the press release.
The ransomware incident Slayton referred to occurred last May, prompting officials to take down individual courts’ websites and shut off internal file servers. However, the cloud-based electronic filing system was not impacted and allowed parties to continue submitting documents through the outage.
Tyler itself was the victim of a ransomware incident last September, though no evidence has been presented that it was related to the Texas courts attack.
The new contract beginning in 2022 also includes several upgrades to the filing system, including new self-service administrative tools for its roughly 425,000 users, reporting capabilities for court administrators and clerks and document checks to reduce the number of court filings that are returned to the filing party for corrections. It will also expand the variety of file formats…
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