SEOUL: North Korea created a fake version of Naver, South Korea's largest internet portal, as part of a sophisticated phishing attack designed to harvest personal information, Seoul's spy agency said Wednesday.
One of South Korea's biggest tech companies, Naver's myriad services -- including Google-like maps, financial services similar to Apple Pay, and popular blogs and chat forums -- are used daily by many Koreans.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service said Pyongyang had created a phishing site that replicated Naver's main page, including its real-time news, trading and real estate sections.
The site, naverportal.com, was designed to hack South Koreans' Naver IDs and passwords, giving Pyongyang access to valuable personal data, NIS added.
"As North Korea's hacking attack methods against our people are becoming more sophisticated, we ask people to be extra vigilant," NIS said in a statement, adding measures have been taken to block the phishing site from South Korean users.
"Please cease accessing it immediately if you spot a page that's not a standard Naver access domain URL," it added.
Seoul's foreign ministry also announced Wednesday that it had decided to strengthen its collaboration with Mandiant -- an American cybersecurity firm and Google subsidiary -- to better respond to North Korea's cyber activities.
"North Korea is carrying out omnidirectional cyberattacks, such as theft of cryptocurrency and hacking of sensitive information, all over the world," the ministry said in a statement.
That activity "not only causes property damage to innocent individuals and companies, but also poses a serious threat to the global IT ecosystem as a whole," it added.
According to Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, Pyongyang stole as much as US$1.7 billion in cryptocurrency last year alone and supported its weapons programmes in part by gathering information through "malicious cyber activities."