Tuesday, April 17, 2001

Denial of Tax Service KYW News Radio in Philadelphia reported on 17 Apr 2001 that there had been a problem when tax procrastinators attempted to file their Pennsylvania State returns just before the midnight Monday deadline. Apparently in the last few hours, users received an error message from the filing Web site, and they were unable to complete their transaction. Because of this, the state decided to give ALL late filers an extension through 18 Apr. Officials were quoted as saying that "a glitch on the Web server" was the cause of the problem (whatever that means). This brings to mind the possibility of denial-of-service attacks on the infrastructure being a way to avoid paying taxes (short term, anyway). [Rebecca Mercuri] 23:07 # G!