A Russian national was arrested in Israel earlier this month for cybersecurity crimes against the United States, the Russian embassy in Israel said this week.
Alexei Burkov was arrested at the behest of U.S. officials as he attempted to depart from Ben Gurion Airport on Dec. 13, the embassy told Interfax. “The accusations are connected with the breaking into computer databases,” said Ruslan Kandaurov, head of the Russian embassy’s consular office in Israel. Another source suggested the accusations pertained to U.S. banking institutions.
“It was not an Interpol warrant,” an unnamed Russian diplomat told his country’s TASS News Agency. “So far, there is no official information from Interpol. It was a warrant from the U.S. civil authorities.”
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Russia is one of just a handful of countries with which the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty. Yet Russia and Israel are both members of Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization. Russia has argued that Israel does not have the authority to make the arrest without an Interpol warrant.
“Israel never does such arrests on a request from U.S. investigators,” another source told TASS. The source also said that an extradition hearing was set for Jan. 21. Russian officials will be allowed to attend the proceeding, though it will be closed to the press.
Along with China, Russia is a top origin point of cyberattacks against the United States. Server breaches in the State Department, Defense Department, and White House have all been traced to Russia over the last year. However, authorities generally will not pursue perpetrators in attacks linked to intelligence breaches. International pursuit is typically reserved for hackers who target commercial institutions.
The U.S. has sought to obviate commercial hacking over the last year, and particularly the sort of state-backed commercial hacking for which China has been mainly culpable. The countries reached a bilateral agreement stating that they would work to end such activity on Sept. 25, and China made several arrests in October as a result.
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In November, a communique resulting from a meeting of the G20 Summit mirrored the text of that bilateral September agreement. Russia is a member of the G20, though it remains to be seen how seriously the country will take the communique.
