Security Brief: Tax Scams Aim To Steal Funds From Taxpayers
Proofpoint, Monday, March 30th, 2026
Threat actors love to take advantage of tax season. It's peak social engineering time: combine monetary concerns with often stressful responsibilities, sprinkle in the expectation of emails about taxes from multiple organizations and you've got a recipe for cybercrime.
So far in 2026 we've seen over a hundred campaigns leverage tax themes leading to malware, remote monitoring and management (RMM) payloads, fraud, and credential phishing. Tax-themed campaigns are expected annually, but this year we're seeing more RMM payloads, activity from newly identified threat actors, and a broader variety of social engineering lures.