Cybersecurity

FBI, DHS Warn of Hacker Mercenaries Funded by Nation-States

Lines between government-backed hackers and cyber criminals are getting fuzzier, top officials told lawmakers Thursday.

That’s one message the FBI wanted to send when it indicted two Russian intelligence officers and two criminal co-defendants for a major breach of the Yahoo email service in March, Director Christopher Wray said.

“We are seeing an emergence of that kind of collaboration which used to be two separate things—nation-state actors and criminal hackers,” Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee. “Now there’s this collusion, if you will.”

The Homeland Security Department is also following the trend, acting Secretary Elaine Duke told the committee.

“What we’re having to do is really understand, as the director said earlier, the difference between state actors, people [who are] maybe just looking for financial gain and those hybrid actors and that’s become more difficult,” she said.

Homeland Security leads civilian government cybersecurity and helps critical infrastructure providers, such as airports, banks and hospitals, secure their computer networks.