It started when a hacker – said by law enforcement to be in Russia – broke into computers of the South Carolina Department of Revenue and stole 74.7 gigabytes of data contained in electronically filed tax returns dating back to 1998.

Included in the haul were Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, and credit cards listed on tax returns. Information was stolen pertaining to 3.8 million individual taxpayers and 699,900 businesses.

As for how it happened, details are still emerging. In testimony Thursday before a committee of the House of Representatives of South Carolina the former head of IT for the department said that his bosses did not pay adequate attention to the security of data.

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