What could make it even more stressful to do your taxes this year?
Answer: Malware.
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As if anyone needed more to think about as Tax Day approaches in the U.S., a new report from Bleeping Computer found that malicious emails appearing to be from the IRS are showing up in the inboxes of Americans awaiting tax documents. The infected messages come with attachments like W-9 forms to be filled out, but opening them releases a strain of malware related to Emotet, which has been found on computers since 2014.
Fortunately, the report indicates that the malicious attachments are relatively easy to spot. First, they arrive as zipped Word or OneNote documents, while true tax forms are almost always PDFs. And if that zipped file is more than 500MB, you can probably bet it’s no good and is best avoided.
