“Foreign governments are building relationships with criminals and other hackers to hide their attempts to break into American computer systems, the head of U.S. Cyber Command told members of Congress on Wednesday.

‘It potentially or theoretically makes it more difficult to go country X and say we see this activity going on, you are doing it, this is unacceptable to us,’ Adm. Michael S. Rogers said. ‘And their ability to say it’s not us, it’s criminal groups.’

Rogers, who leads both Cyber Command and the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, said criminals remain the most numerous threat to American networks and people’s data, but foreign governments have the patience, skills and resources to carry out the most sophisticated attacks.”

Source: U.S. Cyber Command chief: Foreign governments use criminals to hack U.S. systems – Baltimore Sun