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A top Amazon executive has said the US technology giant has blocked more than 1,800 job applications from suspected North Korean agents.

North Koreans tried to apply for remote working IT jobs using stolen or fake identities, Amazon’s chief security officer Stephen Schmidt said in a LinkedIn post.

“Their objective is typically straightforward: get hired, get paid, and funnel wages back to fund the regime’s weapons programs,” he said, adding that this trend is likely to be happening at scale across the industry, especially in the US.

Authorities in the US and South Korea have warned about Pyongyang’s operatives carrying out online scams.

Amazon has seen a nearly one-third increase in job applications from North Koreans in the past year, said Mr Schmidt in his post.

He said the operatives typically work with people managing “laptop farms” – referring to computers based in the US that are run remotely from outside of the country.

The firm used a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and verification by its staff to screen job applications, he said.

The strategies used by such fraudsters have become more sophisticated, Mr Schmidt said.

Bad actors are hijacking dormant LinkedIn accounts using leaked credentials to gain verification. They target genuine software engineers to appear credible, he said, urging firms to report suspicious job applications to the authorities.

Mr Schmidt warned employers to look out for indicators of fraudulent North Korean job applications, including incorrectly formatted phone numbers and mismatched education histories.

In June, the US government said it had uncovered 29 “laptop farms” that were being operated illegally across the country by North Korean IT workers.

They used stolen or forged identities of Americans to help North Korean nationals get jobs in the US, said the Department of Justice (DOJ).

It also indicted US brokers who had helped secure jobs for the North Korean operatives.

In July, a woman from Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in jail for running a laptop farm to help North Korean IT workers secure remote jobs at more than 300 US companies.

The DOJ said the scheme generated more than $17m (£12.6m) in illicit gains for her and Pyongyang.

Vince Zampella, who co-created the widely-popular video game series Call of Duty, has died in a car crash in California, aged 55.

Zampella’s death was confirmed by Electronic Arts, which owns Respawn Entertainment, a game studio he co-founded.

The influential video game developer was travelling in a Ferrari with another person, when it crashed and caught fire on a highway in Los Angeles on Sunday.

“This is an unimaginable loss, and our hearts are with Vince’s family, his loved ones, and all those touched by his work,” a spokesperson for Electronic Arts told the BBC.

Officials said the person on the vehicle’s passenger seat was ejected while the driver remained trapped. It is unclear if Zampella was driving the car and who the other person inside was.

Both people inside the vehicle died.

“For unknown reasons, the vehicle veered off the roadway, struck a concrete barrier, and became fully engulfed,” the California Highway Patrol said in a statement to the BBC.

Zampella created Call of Duty with his long time collaborators Jason West and Grant Collier in 2003.

Partly inspired by events in World War II, the game has sold more than 500 million copies making owners Microsoft’s Activision one of the most profitable gaming companies. It has also spawned an upcoming live-action film.

The Call of Duty franchise was not his only success. He was also behind other widely popular games including the Medal of Honor, Titanfall and Apex Legend.

“He really cared about the player experience, he cared about making games, he cared about how people felt when they played and that really came across whenever you spoke to him,” Keza MacDonald, the Guardian’s video games editor told BBC Newshour.

In 2010, Zampella and West were fired from Activision, which publishes the Call of Duty games, and the pair were subsequently locked in a long dispute with the company which they settled out of court in 2012.

At Electronic Arts, Zampella worked on Battlefield 6, which is seen as a direct competitor to Call of Duty.

Infinity Ward, the American company that developed Call of Duty, said Zampella “will always have a special place in our history”.

“Your legacy of creating iconic, lasting entertainment is immeasurable,” the company said in a statement on X.