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. Laz]

lol

cheatbirds

[L.A. Chieffan]

It's the cardinal way, they train their computer people to hack the right way in the minors

['Hamas' Jenkins]

That's an absolute disgrace if true. Whoever is involved or authorized this should lose their jobs and be blacklisted from baseball. Also, total dick move by Luhnow if he actually did take proprietary information from the team when he went to Houston.

[petegz28]

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.

How about filming opposing teams' practices???

[ChiefsCountry]

Might have to listen to Kevin Slaten this afternoon.

[Old Dog]

Originally Posted by ptlyon

New England Patriots East

Originally Posted by KC native

Don't you mean West?

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

[DJ's left nut]

{facepalm}

Goddammit.

Mozeliak was Jocketty's chief lieutenant; came over with him from Colorado. Jocketty and Luhnow hated each other and while Mozeliak was hired largely because the front office believed he would work well with Luhnow, there's no doubt in my mind that Mozeliak's guys were also guys that were loyal to Jocketty before him; they were all part of the same tree.

So when Luhnow leaves, some idiot thinks they'll get back at the snot-nosed numbers guy and sets out to embarrass him. They didn't even get a competitive advantage from it (hell, if that's your plan, you don't ever reveal that you've made it into their system; you just continue mining it for information) - they just did it to make Luhnow look bad.

10 years after the organization fractured between Jocketty and Luhnow and we're still dealing with blowback from it. Unbelievable. Stupid, petty bullshit by some underling with an axe to grind. ****; this is gonna suck ass.

[Perineum Ripper]

[Mr. Flopnuts]

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.

You should be happy that another team is in play for cheaters of the year.

[ChiTown]

Originally Posted by mac459

[Mr. Flopnuts]

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.

[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.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by petegz28

How about filming opposing teams' practices???

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.

[Rudy tossed tigger's salad]

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.

Could have been someone other than Luhnow

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by wazu

It probably is from a results perspective, but since it involves a criminal act I will concede its on a slightly different level overall.

It's Silicon Valley.

Anyone catch this season? When Gilfoyle 'hacks' End Frame by taking the post-it note with the password off his desk.

Whoever did this just went down a list of old passwords until one of them stuck. On one hand, it's funny as hell. On the other hand...mother. ****er. It's just such a stupid, petty maneuver. These are two teams in different leagues who utilize largely the exact same player evaluation tools/metrics because goddamn Luhnow built them for STL. The Cards already have what he uses, or at least a very close approximation.

There was no competitive advantage to be gained here and the idiots knew it, that's why they leaked it rather than sit on the knowledge and pump the Astros for information for years.

It's just so goddamn dumb and it's obviously a terrible look for the organization.