[NY Times] Cardinals under FBI investigation for hacking Astros

Cardinals statement:

“The team has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so. Given that this is an ongoing federal investigation, it is not appropriate for us to comment further.”​

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[rQUOTEr]- In retrospect, of course it was the Cardinals. We knew somebody hacked into the Astros' system last summer -- as you'll recall, it was big news -- and what better candidates than the Cardinals, so familiar with Jeff Luhnow, Sig Mejdal, and others who jumped ship? As today's report points out, people in the Cardinals' front office had access to the passwords used by Luhnow, et al, when they worked for the Cardinals. And we all have our password tendencies.

- Again according to Michael Schmidt's reporting in the Times, "Agents soon found that the Astros’ network had been entered from a computer at a home that some Cardinals officials had lived in." Of course top-ranking "officials" usually don't live together, so this suggests lower-level employees did the actual hacking. That doesn't mean their bosses didn't know. But they might at least have plausible deniability.

- Much of this might just seem like boys being boys. But if the F.B.I.'s involved, it's not a joke. And while I certainly don't want to see anyone going to jail over this, if the allegations are true, MLB has to come down on the Cardinals hard. If only to discourage or forestall escalating cyber-war between teams.

What might that look like? I don't know. You probably can't yank draft picks, because draft picks are part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. You can't make them play with 24 players for the rest of the season; same reason. About all you can do, I think, is suspend some or all of the guilty individuals and levy one hell of a fine.

One hell of a story, huh?

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a...rdinals-been-hacking-the-standings-too-061615[/rQUOTEr]

 

That doesn't seem fair to the other 30 teams.

 

Give us some of their minor league players.

 

So in all seriousness, will the Astros get some sort of compensation for this or will it just be the Cardinals getting punished?

 

I'm sure this will be blamed on a Cardinals bat boy.

 

Well, the Astros having propriety information hacked and possibly shared is not fair either.

That's fine if they want to disperse their picks amongst all the other teams... I also don't understand why yanking picks would be in violation of the CBA. This entire offense is likely in violation of the CBA.

 

Agree, but the other teams benefiting equally from the Cardinals punishment wouldn't seem fair to the Astros when they are the only team directly affected by the Cardinals illegal actions.

Full disclosure, I have no idea what an appropriate punishment would be.

 

I wonder if they intentionally left passwords the same to bait them.

 

Cardinals and Patriots with their scandals. Who's next? The Spurs?

 

One of these things were never like the others.

 

Yep. I'd be slightly surprised if no one went to prison for this, particularly since the FBI is involved. Data breach is one of the areas that they are really focused on right now, particularly due to international hacking of competitive business information. But they are looking to make examples of high profile cases domestically, and this would certainly qualify.

Draft picks and other penalties from the MLB are the least of the Cardinals concerns at this point.

 

What was he suppose to do? The dang bats just wouldn't deflate.

 

Two questions:

(1) how long have the Astros had a physicist?
(2) why do these Cardinals officials live together? They must be extremely low level front office guys. Still possible that the Cardinals GM ordered them to do it considering his hatred of Luhnow.

 

[rQUOTEr]In the end, if I were a betting man, I’d bet that one or two low level Cardinals employees take the fall for whatever results from the FBI investigation into them hacking the Astros. And by “take the fall” I don’t mean that they’re made scapegoats. Given what we know thus far about the FBI investigation, it was not a sophisticated thing and may very well have been considered a lark or an impulsive stunt by someone who simply didn’t like Jeff Luhnow back when he was their boss. The odds of it being an organizational-wide conspiracy seem low.

But to diminish the scope of the alleged hacking of the Astros’ system is not to diminish its seriousness. Not from a legal perspective anyway. Because the infiltration of someone else’s computer system, no matter how easily and primitively it was done, is covered by a particularly pernicious federal law: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”).

...

The upshot: this may have been an impulsive or spiteful action as opposed to some orchestrated espionage effort. It may have involved one person rather than five or ten and may have been as simple as looking at a crumpled up Post-it note of old passwords rather than some sophisticated hackery. But, to the feds, it may be considered something highly felonious and may turn into something huge. Especially given that, unlike some CFAA cases, this one actually allegedly involved the fraudulent accessing of a computer network across state lines.

Perhaps federal investigators and prosecutors will show restraint in this instance. After all, knowing that the Astros may have wanted to trade for Ichiro Suzuki is not a big deal in the grand scheme. But when was the last time federal prosecutors showed restraint? Especially when baseball — which the Feds have always used in order to make an example — is involved.

Finally, recall that the reporter who broke this story is Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times. He’s a good reporter who broke many stories about federal steroids investigations. And he has spent more time on the national security beat in recent years. His sources tend not to be the sorts who are less-than-eager to go full-bore into federal violations.

Which is to say that someone, perhaps someone with the Cardinals, is in for a world of pain.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...ack-was-expect-the-feds-to-take-it-seriously/[/rQUOTEr]

 

I have a tough time believing that low level employees who leak the information online wouldn't also pass along what they find to not-so-low level coworkers.

 

Permanent removal from the Competitive Balance Draft....which they should not be in anyway...

 

I would say the odds of proving organization-wide conspiracy is low. That said, I would expect that it started out as an impulsive stunt, but what does a low level stooge do when he succeeds in breaking into another teams network?

Edit: Baseballa beat me to it.

 

The Cardinals likely will be punished, but there's no way the Astros would or should be compensated. No different than punishing the Patriots for deflating footballs, but not compensating the Colts.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/Cardinals">@Cardinals</a> Hey, just wondering if you could tell me if Jose Altuve is going to play today or if I should sit him for my fantasy team?</p>&mdash; Mike Bates (@MikeBatesSBN) <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBatesSBN/status/610855091189387264">June 16, 2015</a></blockquote>
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Yeah Cards are stupid for "hacking"

Luhnow is stupid for not protecting the Astros by using the same ****ing passwords