The government has issued a warning of potential cyber attacks following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) raised its warning to the agency’s third highest alert level at 2 p.m. on Monday, two hours after the North’s state-run media, the Korean Central News Agency, reported the death.

The government said it is closely monitoring any signs of malignant codes, altered Web sites or sudden increases in traffic on the Internet to cope with cyber attacks, such as the distributed denial of service attack.

The government also decided to strengthen its monitoring of major state or civilian organization Web sites and to swiftly deal with any attacks on related organizations.

The government asked Internet users not to open unidentified and suspicious e-mails.