St. Louis Cardinals front office under FBI investigation for hacking

[ReynardMuldrake]

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, for hacking into the internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

The Houston Astros hired Luhnow as general manager in December 2011. Before then he had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press
The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Illegal intrusions into companies’ networks have become commonplace, but it is generally conducted by hackers operating in foreign countries, like Russia and China, who steal large tranches of data or trade secrets for military equipment and electronics.

Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement.

The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team.

The case is a rare mark of ignominy for the Cardinals, one of the sport’s most revered and popular organizations. The team has the best record in baseball this season (42-21), regularly commands outsize television ratings and has reached the National League Championship Series nine times since 2000. The Cardinals, who last won the World Series in 2011, have 11 titles over all, second only to the Yankees.

Their owner, Bill DeWitt, is a highly regarded executive who last year was in charge of the search committee for a new commissioner to replace the retiring Bud Selig.

Law enforcement officials believe the hacking was executed by vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals hoping to wreak havoc on the work of Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager who had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals until 2011.

From 1994 to 2012, the Astros and the Cardinals were division rivals, in the National League. For a part of that time, Mr. Luhnow was a Cardinals executive, primarily handling scouting and player development. One of many innovative thinkers drawn to the sport by the “Moneyball” phenomenon, he was credited with building baseball’s best minor league system, as well as drafting several players who would become linchpins of the Cardinals’ 2011 World Series-winning team.

The Astros hired Mr. Luhnow as general manager in December 2011, and he quickly began applying his unconventional approach to running a baseball team. In an exploration of the team’s radical transformation, Bloomberg Business called it “a project unlike anything baseball has seen before.”

Under Mr. Luhnow, the Astros have accomplished a striking turnaround; they are in first place in the American League West division. But in 2013, before their revival at the major league level, their internal deliberations about statistics and players were compromised, law enforcement officials said.

The intrusion did not appear to be sophisticated, the law enforcement officials said. When Mr. Luhnow was with the Cardinals, the organization built a computer network, called Redbird, to house all of their baseball operations information — including scouting reports and player personnel information. After leaving to join the Astros, and bringing some front-office personnel with him from the Cardinals, Houston created a similar program known as Ground Control.

Ground Control contained the Astros’ “collective baseball knowledge,” according to a Bloomberg Business article published last year. The program took a series of variables and “weights them according to the values determined by the team’s statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches,” the article said.

Investigators believe Cardinals officials, concerned that Mr. Luhnow had taken their idea and proprietary baseball information to the Astros, examined a master list of passwords used by Mr. Luhnow and the other officials who had joined the Astros when they worked for the Cardinals. The Cardinals officials are believed to have used those passwords to gain access to the Astros’ network, law enforcement officials said.

Last year, some of the information was posted anonymously online, according to an article on Deadspin. Among the details that were exposed were trade discussions that the Astros had with other teams. Mr. Luhnow was asked at the time whether the breach would affect how he dealt with other teams. “Today I used a pencil and paper in all my conversations,” he said.

Believing that the Astros’ network had been compromised by a rogue hacker, Major League Baseball notified the F.B.I., and the authorities in Houston opened an investigation. Agents soon found that the Astros’ network had been entered from a computer at a home that some Cardinals officials had lived in. The agents then turned their attention to the team’s front office.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/sp...id=tw-bna&_r=0

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Except what the Patriots did was no "crime". You do get the difference between federal laws and NFL rules, I hope?

Come on now, counselor. "Partners in crime" is a well known figure of speech.

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

yeah

Kraft just accepted forfeiture of a 1st round pick, 4th round pick, and $1M because the Patriots did nothing wrong

that's what innocent people do

yep

I know that's what I'd do! Especially after my buddymish destroyed evidence from the last time we got caught cheating.

[BossChief]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Right, because footballs that may or may not have been deflated by a very slight amount is absolutely comparable to hacking an opposing team's computer network to get confidential information.

But

But

But there is no RULE against hacking into an opposing teams database, so it was A OK.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Welp,

Embrace the full turn.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by BossChief

But

But

But there is no RULE against hacking into an opposing teams database, so it was A OK.

I'm not too up in arms about this since I simply just don't give a **** ...

but we already have DJ, Cards homer, defending the breach saying it provided no competitive advantage since the morons who 'hacked' the system leaked the information rather than continuing to cheat and gain an actual competitive advantage

that's about as good as Amnorix and his "well other teams were doing it, too!" defense every time the Pats get caught and forfeit a 1st round pick

that dude is still trying to point to science stating the Pats "didn't even cheat!" after their owner accepted the penalties handed down by the NFL (steep ones, at that).

That's not what innocent people do ... ever.

[Marcellus]

Very odd to "hack" the system of a non rival, non division team. Like has been mentioned some idiot probably had the password and used it without higher level consent or knowledge.

Ridiculous shit and going to look bad regardless.

[Don Corlemahomes]

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Very odd to "hack" the system of a non rival, non division team. Like has been mentioned some idiot probably had the password and used it without higher level consent or knowledge.

Ridiculous shit and going to look bad regardless.

Maybe, but it also could have just been the one team with a formal Cardinals exec with bad password security.

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Very odd to "hack" the system of a non rival, non division team. Like has been mentioned some idiot probably had the password and used it without higher level consent or knowledge.

Ridiculous shit and going to look bad regardless.

Not really that odd, when you consider how much the front offices dislike each other.

The teams may not really be rivals anymore, but the people working in the front offices certainly are.

[BossChief]

Who's to say they didn't do something similar with other teams, too?

-I have no dog in this fight-

[Hootie]

I will agree, though, because I remember when they posted the Astros hack on deadspin everyone was like, "lol what a moron."

So, competitive advantage or no, it does seem like a move made out of spite. So I'll let DJ have that one.

As for Amnorix steering the thread towards NE's cheating ... once your owner accepts penalties levied down for cheating, arguing that your team didn't actually cheat is about the most ridiculous thing you could do, well, unless you're a total idiot homer.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by BossChief

Who's to say they didn't do something similar with other teams, too?

-I have no dog in this fight-

Could be, if this was authorized on a remotely high level. The difference would be opportunity, I would think.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by Cochise

We had the Black Sox, now the Black Birds?

The Black Squaks?

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by BossChief

But

But

But there is no RULE against hacking into an opposing teams database, so it was A OK.

Yes, actually, hacking into other peoples computers is something that the government has rules about

[Don Corlemahomes]

Originally Posted by BossChief

Who's to say they didn't do something similar with other teams, too?

-I have no dog in this fight-

Well, unless other teams have former cardinal executives who don't change their passwords and put information on an extremely vulnerable platform, I'd say it's highly unlikely.