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

[ChiefsCountry]

The Cardinals will post all the hacked documents on WachaLeaks.

— Steve Rushin (@SteveRushin) June 16, 2015

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by duncan_idaho

Better just hope the Cardinals didn't nab a guy the Astros were extremely high on in the draft or something, with a paper trail. That would be the most egregious thing that could happen, IMO.

For example, if there is an email chain in the Cardinals files (which the FBI now has reason to go after) about a player (Say, Michael Wacha) and how the Cards should jump up their evaluation of him based on info from the Astros database, I imagine that would draw attention from the FBI and MLB...

Wacha was definitely the first name that came to mind for me as well. It was immediately after Luhnow left. My only thought being that the timelines on this suggest that this probably didn't happen until a little after Luhnow was gone. I'd imagine some guys in the front office saw/read/heard what Luhnow was doing now that he was in charge in Houston for awhile. They'd have started poking around and found something shortly thereafter.

The timelines will be made clear soon enough, but if I'm guessing I'm going to say this is probably something that happened in the 2013 range. So Wacha would likely not be in play but perhaps Jack Flaherty got bumped up? Kaminsky? I'd say the information would have likely been used in the 2013 and 2014 drafts.

[C3HIEF3S]

lol

[Eleazar]

This is a much bigger deal that Spygate, Deflategate, etc., if it were true.

Actual real-world felonies, actual cyber intrusions, actual people going to prison for those crimes being a distinct possibility.

Aside from that, you have potentially priceless information being stolen about player personnel, trade discussions etc etc.

Outside of actually throwing games, this would be as bad as it gets. Steroids are bad, but that's an individual crime by one player. This could be the biggest scandal since 1919. It's hard to think of any examples of cheating on this level in baseball

Anyone involved should be banned for life.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Cochise

This is a much bigger deal that Spygate, Deflategate, etc., if it were true.

Actual real-world felonies, actual cyber intrusions, actual people going to prison for those crimes being a distinct possibility.

Aside from that, you have potentially priceless information being stolen about player personnel, trade discussions etc etc.

Outside of actually throwing games, this would be as bad as it gets. Steroids are bad, but that's an individual crime by one player. This could be the biggest scandal since 1919.

Anyone involved should be banned for life.

Thank you. I'm really glad that someone gets this.

Computer hacking is a federal freaking crime.

[ChiTown]

Originally Posted by Cochise

This is a much bigger deal that Spygate, Deflategate, etc., if it were true.

Actual real-world felonies, actual cyber intrusions, actual people going to prison for those crimes being a distinct possibility.

Aside from that, you have potentially priceless information being stolen about player personnel, trade discussions etc etc.

Outside of actually throwing games, this would be as bad as it gets. Steroids are bad, but that's an individual crime by one player. This could be the biggest scandal since 1919.

Anyone involved should be banned for life.

Agreed. Including the entire Cardinals Franchise..............

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Thank you. I'm really glad that someone gets this.

Computer hacking is a federal freaking crime.

We had the Black Sox, now the Black Birds?

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Thank you. I'm really glad that someone gets this.

Computer hacking is a federal freaking crime.

Your team isn't absolved. They'll just have partners in crime now.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by Mr. Flopnuts

Your team isn't absolved. They'll just have partners in crime now.

but it was just a little bit of air !

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

but it was just a little bit of air !

It was probably only 3 or 4 emails!

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Mr. Flopnuts

Your team isn't absolved. They'll just have partners in crime now.

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

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

but it was just a little bit of air !

Originally Posted by Mr. Flopnuts

It was probably only 3 or 4 emails!

Except it might not have been ANY air. The physical evidence is weak as hell. Heck, the New York Times, relying on an independent research report, blew the Wells Report out of the water.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/op...gate.html?_r=0

Our recommendation? When the N.F.L. hears Mr. Brady’s appeal of his suspension later this month, it should proceed with the knowledge that the Wells report is unreliable.

http://www.aei.org/publication/on-wells-report/

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploa...lls-report.pdf

Big punchline:

The fact that the average pressure of the Colts balls was significantly above the prediction of the Ideal Gas Law, while that of the Patriots balls was not, is inconsistent with the findings of the Wells report. Our conclusion that the warming of the balls during halftime is the key factor overlooked in the Wells report is supported by the observation that the readings of the intercepted Patriots football, measured separately from the other Patriots balls, came in almost precisely at the prediction of the law. Under the hypothesis asserted by the Well report, the odds of this Patriots ball matching the Ideal Gas Law prediction were between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of
300. It is therefore unlikely that the Patriots deflated the footballs.

[kstater]

The postseason ban will be fun

[Hootie]

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

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

Thank you. I'm really glad that someone gets this.

Computer hacking is a federal freaking crime.

So is possession of a controlled substance; i.e. the steroid scandal. And at least that would hand provided a substantial competitive advantage.

The legal ramifications of a scandal aren't as critical to me as its impact of the play on the field.

Ultimately I see this as roughly equivalent in terms of degree to the BoSox winning the WS with Manny being as drugged as a racehorse.