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Threat actors are now targeting Australian Taxation Office (ATO) accounts to steal money from unknowing individuals. Recently, a retired individual who previously worked in the banking and finance industry became a victim of this high-profile cybercrime.
Sue (not her real name) was with her accountant for their routine tax return discussion. Her accountant congratulated her on the sale of her house in Footscray. Sue was baffled because she didn’t own a home in the area, much more selling it.
This prompted both Sue and the accountant to review her records and, to their shock, discovered that she had fallen victim to a cybercrime. They uncovered that someone could hack her ATO account and created a fake one using her information and using it to file false refunds totalling $25,000.
“We found that the address, the bank account number, the telephone number, and the email had all been changed,” noted Sue, who was still puzzled about how it was possible since she was diligent in avoiding cybercriminals.
According to Sue, she never disclosed sensitive information, never clicked unfamiliar links, and made sure that she only accessed her myGov and ATO accounts on one device. Sue added that she religiously scans her device for malware and viruses. She even takes the extra step of shredding her physical receipts.
Sue immediately contacted ATO upon this discovery and, to her dismay, found out that the office had minimal capacity to help her. She turned to ABC Investigations for help after she read ABC’s report on a similar case.
ABC then contacted ATO and discovered that the fraudster created a myGov fake account on 24 September using Sue’s tax file number (TFN) and other personal information. The criminal then proceeded to sever Sue’s ATO account from her genuine myGov account, effectively bypassing additional security measures.
This incident showed a gaping hole in the systems, and Vanessa Teague, the founder of Thinking Cybersecurity, noted that information like this should not be kept from the public.
“There’s a particularly pernicious Australian habit of hiding details and saying, ‘Oh, we’re keeping it secret for security reasons, which is not justified. If the protocol isn’t sound, it’s not helping anybody to obscure it from the public because the bad people will figure out how it works. You’re just obscuring the opportunity for good people to help you,” Teague added.
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