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Baseball Team Hacks Another Team's Networks, FBI Investigates
An anonymous reader writes: The St. Louis Cardinals have been one of the better baseball teams over the past several years. The Houston Astros have been one of the worst. Nevertheless, there is evidence that officials for the Cardinals broke into a network maintained by the Astros in order to gain access to "internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics, and scouting reports." The FBI is now leading an investigation into the breach, and they have served subpoenas to the Cardinals and to Major League Baseball demanding access to electronic correspondence. It's the first known instance of corporate espionage involving a network breach in professional sports. Law enforcement said the intrusion "did not appear to be sophisticated." It seems likely that a personal vendetta against the Astros's general manager is involved.
Right up until the point you said "baseball." In the title.
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They used their ex-GM and ex-employee's passwords from their network to access the Astro's network. But why was it so easy to get their passwords in the first place. Isn't this normally not possible?
Said Tom Hanks.
That's just not cricket!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Are you sure about that?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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So chalk it up to corporate espionage. Inept corporate espionage, but corporate espionage nonetheless.
Hey, if the NSA gets to violate the Constitution and spy on Americans, why not the MLB?
Sauce for the goose is great for the gander.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There is science and innovation around all sports, you just have to be bright enough to notice it. Take baseball the batter has to be smart enough to know that the pitcher only throws certain pitches during certain counts and that there are slight differences in the release of different pitches giving the batter a better chance to hit the ball. Same with football you need to have excellent pattern recognition to know what the defense is going to do and what you can do to maximize your teams chance at success. Even something as simple as running has tons of science in it, knowing how hard to train, what type of training, and how fast the person can recover. I didn't even mention the science that goes into clothing and shoes. There are very few dumb jocks that succeed in professional sports, talent alone will not get you to the professional level you need something more.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
DH being the Designated Hacker, of course.
...who was involved.
"War makes me sad." - Me
It seems the most competitive teams are often the most likely to cheat. The NFL Patriots also got caught cheating twice.
It seems a competitive drive is a two-edge sword: if you are driven to push the boundaries in sports, it seems you are also driven to push the boundary in other areas.
Table-ized A.I.
Q: Why are the Astros like Michael Jackson?
A: They run around with a glove on one hand for no useful reason.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I find it hard to believe that anyone was dumb enough to break into a system that is virtually certain to count as a 'protected computer' for the purposes of the CFAA, from their home and without doing even a half assed job of covering their tracks.
Even aside from any penalties that may or may not occur because of laws related to trade secrets, tortious somethingsomething, etc. and any MLB-imposed penalties, even merely cracking the system open for a look, and doing absolutely nothing with the data, across state lines gives the feds the option to come down on you like a ton of vengeful bricks. Really, really, dumb. FFS, if your stupid little pissing match was worth breaking a few laws over, you'd probably be better off burglarizing the location housing the database and dumping it in person; at least that keeps the feds away.
A sport invented to make cricket look exciting.
(No offense intended. I actually like cricket.)
if you can finagle yourself to obtain the upper hand so much the better.
It is what it is.
Shoot, it sounds like the Cardinals folk who left took a database copy when they moved to the Astros.
The article says they used the same passwords as when they worked for the Cardinals (and user names I would assume).
That makes absolutely no sense. I can't think of a more idiotic security approach (on both teams parts to be honest). I would bet the Astros system was internet exposed. Otherwise, the article would have mentioned VPN access breach or something, they took the time to point out the access was easily gained.
Full Disclosure: I live in St. Louis but don't pay attention to sports much. I do like attending a game then and again, and we took our twins to their first game earlier this month (the Cards hit a home run on the first received pitch and my kids now think there will always be fireworks...).
BlameBillCosby.com
Cheating is OK when the reward is championships and the penalty is a wrist slap.
Found the bitter Colts fan.
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I'm a Reds fan, so I do hate both of the teams involved. It's all very sad, since the Cardinals gained very little from this other than creating a week of gasps last year by leaking the Astros database and some internal communications where they said what they really thought about some players. Probably no real competitive advantage at all other than embarrassing a couple of Astros employees.. (Although in a few years maybe) I want to offer some rants about ideas I'm seeing here in this thread.
Houston Stole the Cardinals Database:
Wrong!
First of all, the Houston GM designed the Cardinals proprietary database. When he left and went to Houston with some of his assistants, it should be no shocker to anyone that he used what he learned in the past and made his new database a lot like the old one which worked well. He is NOT taking the database with him. He did NOT steal a database. (It's not like he could walk out with a petabyte of data) He can't be asked to forget the analytical procedures he developed. Baseball teams don't make guys sign NDAs, otherwise no one could ever change teams. Teams often will sign scouts from other teams for intelligence gathering as much as for their skills. That's perfectly legal and legit. It would be like if you changed employers you'd be unable to offer insights you have about how to better your new company. So no, he didn't "steal" the database. The idea that the Cardinals were "just checking" is complete bullshit. You can't commit a crime to check on an intellectual property infringement and claim innocence. The fact that they weren't "just checking" is proven by the fact that they leaked the entire database to the net last year. There is no investigative high ground for the Cardinals to stand on.
Reusing an old password:
Stupid, but not a sign of anything sinister.
For those bitching about reusing an old password. Yeah, that's stupid. It's not a sign that he "stole" the database. Like all of you have never used the same password on multiple sites over multiple years. Stupid, but not a sign of a crime. His login was probably just his e-mail address, which the Cardinals would know, because they have to be able to communicate with all 30 GMs.
Bad access policies:
Certainly. "They were asking for it by not using a VPN" does not excuse the crime like some posters seem to think... (And they probably were using one) According to some folks making comments here, you could drive off in a car if the driver dropped the keys on the ground next to it without fear of arrest. Definitely not stealing there... Bullshit victim blaming.
Yes their database was too easy to access. It has to be used by dozens of scouts, most of whom barely earned their high school diploma, who are constantly traveling around the country and, indeed, the world. The Astros need their scouts in the Dominican to have access to their ideas just as much as the scouts in Texas. By nature, you can't get the sort of data security that we would all like in our companies. They wanted their guys to use it and to find it convenient, not burden them with fingerprint scanners. The team was too trusting. I'm sure they've done a lot to fix it in the past year.
I'm sure the logic is that only other baseball teams would want that data anyway, so there was no real concern about a group of Russian hackers copying a database. Why be fort knox secure when you trust and respect the other 29 teams that you share billions of dollars of revenue with? Naive, yes. Intentional, no. Deserved what they got, no. (No one deserves to be the victim of a crime)
Why Spy on the Astros when they Suck anyway?
Nope, they don't suck. Pretty darn good.
Over the past few years, they sucked on purpose. Their rebuilding approach was cynical in its disregard for winning. They felt perfectly okay with being the worst team in baseball in order to build a championship squad more quickly. A website of engineers should approve of such efficiency not bitch about how the Astros suck! It was all about getting go
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I was considering joining up until I read this part.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Um, the Patriots play in Boston, they are just called New England Patriots, doesn't make them representative of all of New England. It isn't like they're going to move to Maine or New York when it is time for a new stadium.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Logging in to someone else's account because they didn't change their password when they switched jobs is what passes for hacking here.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
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