Forbes: US government orders two travel data companies to track Russian hackers

According to the above article, in 2015, the US Secret Service (USSS) began hunting Aleksei Burkov, suspected of aiding in the theft of $ 20 million from stolen credit cards on the website. Cardplanet.

The method used by the USSS to track Burkov, first revealed as a result of an investigation by Forbeswhich shows the extent to which the US government can force two data companies to track these hackers for two years under a 233-year-old law, and issue weekly reports on the suspect’s whereabouts.

The US government has never disclosed how many individuals may be subject to such unusual and prolonged surveillance. Forbes.

Aleksei Burkov at the Supreme Court in Israel on November 3, 2019 Screen capture israelhayom

The two data companies mentioned above, including Saber in the US and Travelport in the UK, are the perfect data providers for US law enforcement thanks to their operations. business their. For decades, Saber and Travelport have collected and stored information about international travelers in what is known as a global distribution system (GDS). This is an information base that makes travel registration easy between airlines, yacht companies, car rental companies and hotel owners.

US law enforcement has seen value in the data used by Saber and Travelport because Moscow does not have an extradition treaty with Washington, meaning they can only arrest Burkov once the suspect leaves Russia.

According to a court order issued in November 2015, the USSS ordered Saber and Travelport to continue tracking Burkov’s movements for two years and to report back to the agency every week on what they saw. That order was in effect for significantly longer than a similar order was announced, which lasted only six months. Saber and Travelport have also been banned from disclosing orders to track Burkov until authorized by a court.

The effectiveness of Burkov’s surveillance remains unclear. Not long after the relevant warrants were issued, Burkov was arrested after spending a week in Tel Aviv in late 2015, according to Israeli media. However, so far there is no official information on how Burkov was tracked when he arrived in Israel.

The US Justice Department did not provide further details, while neither Saber nor Travelport said whether they resisted or complied with the order to track Burkov.

Burkov was extradited from Israel to the US in November 2019, sentenced to nine years in prison in the US in June 2020, and deported to Russia in September 2021, according to CNN.