FBI Director Christopher Wray is warning that countries are now partnering with criminals to launch cyberattacks against the United States, The Washington Free Beacon is reporting.
"We are seeing an emergence of that kind of collaboration," Wray testified before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday.
He noted governments and criminals had carried out cyberattacks separately in the past, but have teamed up in recent years, according to the Free Beacon.
"Now there's this collusion, if you will, that's occurring on a number of instances … like mercenaries being used to commit cyberattacks," he said.
He cited the indictment of a Canadian who had pleaded guilty this week to aiding Russian spies in hacking into Yahoo email accounts.
He said the case reflected "one of the more dangerous emerging threats."
Wray said he has established a "foreign influence task force" to coordinate closely with the Department of Homeland Security in fighting cyberattacks.
And The Hill reported he stressed how seriously his agency is taking the threats, particularly as they relate to elections.
"Needless to say, I take any effort to interfere with our election system by Russia or any other nation state or any non-nation state extremely seriously because it strikes right at the heart of who we are as a country," he said.
"We're focused very much forward-looking at the next couple of election cycles."