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

[SPchief]

Reminder, if you're not already following
@BestFansStLouis on twitter. It's highly recommended.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Never alleged except by a reporter who withdrew it swiftly after realizing he had screwed up, and no evidence of it at all.

Oh, and by yahoos on the Internet. They allege it frequently.

maybe they just hacked the Astros ever so slightly ... that's my guess. If so, if they just cheated a little ... no big deal, right?

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Never alleged except by a reporter who withdrew it swiftly after realizing he had screwed up, and no evidence of it at all.

Oh, and by yahoos on the Internet. They allege it frequently.

What about the NFL?? Are you saying the NFL punished your precious Pats for nothing?

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Old Dog

If he went east long enough he would get there (though it would certainly be a shorter trip heading in the direction you suggest).

Good point. Thanks!

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by ptlyon

New England Patriots Far East

FMP

[ptlyon]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

maybe they just hacked the Astros ever so slightly ... that's my guess. If so, if they just cheated a little ... no big deal, right?

Well, it is the Astros...

[O.city]

Not a good look for the franchise. At all.

Everyone involved needs to burn

[wazu]

Originally Posted by SPchief

Reminder, if you're not already following
@BestFansStLouis on twitter. It's highly recommended.

I'm not a hater, but this is pure gold.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by ptlyon

Well, it is the Astros...

oh I don't care, I was just laughing at Amnorix's 'ever so slightly' comment

[kcfanXIII]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

This is one of the worst cheating scandals in modern sports history.

But also Luhnow is a total dummy for not changing his passwords. C'mon dude.

This all day. Just by the information in this article you can tell the "hackers" are not skilled. They gained access by using a list of old passwords, and they were able to trace the breech to their actual home... The biggest thing about this is it is highly illegal, and with the recent wave of breeches being traced to the far east, (or west of the US for those that are concerned about flight times) the FBI cyber crimes division finally has someone to go after. I expect the punishment to be severe.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

This is one of the worst cheating scandals in modern sports history.

But also Luhnow is a total dummy for not changing his passwords. C'mon dude.

It could have been, but because of the parties to this one in particular, it probably isn't.

Again, Luhnow's stuff is the same stuff the Cards have. And Luhnow never knew anyone was in his system until it was leaked. If the Cards were actually getting good intel, they'd have never leaked the information.

I mean I guess we'll find out; shit's gonna hit the fan here and we'll see what happens when it all settles. Maybe the Cards front office guy(s) were sitting on key data and grabbed Wacha a bit early in the 2012 draft knowing that the Astros might take him in the 2nd. Maybe they leaked the negotiations/information regarding Aiken/Nix and the Casey Close mess last year. But with the sordid history between Luhnow and the remnants of the Jocketty camp, the most likely scenario is that some jackass stumbled into the password and wanted Luhnow to look like a dick.

Nobody that had given this a moment of thought would have ever thought that the Astros/Luhnow would just let that go. If it had really been a source of steady data mining, the Cards front office would have never leaked that information because it was obviously going to get back on them at some point.

[siberian khatru]

of course pic.twitter.com/CvlayMn076

— america (@greghoward88) June 16, 2015

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

of course pic.twitter.com/CvlayMn076

— america (@greghoward88) June 16, 2015

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by petegz28

What about the NFL?? Are you saying the NFL punished your precious Pats for nothing?

Christ. Spygate was NOT ABOUT TAPING PRACTICES. Not even a tiny, little bit.

It was about taping signals in games. A practice that was common and widespread until the NFL sent a memo about it in 2006 prohibiting it.

[BWillie]

So, how big of an advantage would this give you? I would think it would really only help in player acquisition with that team to figure out how much they value a given player. I dont see why the Cardinals would even bother based on risk reward. So stupid of them