14 DAY TRIAL // More than 20,000 smartphones in South Korea are believed to have been infected with malicious applications posted online by an actor in North Korea, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) says.
The apps would be disguised as games and spread on South Korean websites for a period of about four months, since May 19 until September 16.
NIS is the intelligence agency in South Korea, and according to information from them, no actual damage was recorded as a result of the nefarious cyber activity, despite the large number of devices believed to have been affected.
The Korea Times reports that NIS submitted a report to the parliamentary intelligence committee, which stated that the agency contacted the owners of the websites hosting the malicious apps and worked to take the software down.
Furthermore, efforts went into blocking the infrastructure used for extracting the information from compromised devices, and into updating security products to fend against the malware.
According to various sources online, North Korea has increased the number of cyber attacks on South Korea in the recent years, in the first nine months of 2014 being recorded 35% more incidents attributed to the North.
North Korea has 5,900 individuals working for its cyber operations, a figure that is almost double than what was known two years ago, Yonhap news agency said in July.