Report: St. Louis Cardinals subject of FBI investigation for hacking Houston Astros
Members of the St. Louis Cardinals front office are under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department for hacking into a computer network of the Houston Astros in an attempt to steal information regarding player personnel and scouting reports, according to a report in The New York Times.
The FBI’s Houston field office is leading the investigation and, according to the report, has served subpeoenas on both the Cardinals and Major League Baseball. No individuals have yet been named in the investigation.
Major League Baseball released a statement saying it had “fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database.’’ The Cardinals also issued a statement, noting that it “has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so.’’
The breach was to a database created by Astros’ general manager Jeff Luhnow, a former executive with the Cardinals. Luhnow was hired by Houston in 2011 and, according to the report, built and used a similar database when in St. Louis. From the New York Times story:
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.
The report states that Major League Baseball alerted the FBI that it felt the Astros’ database had been compromised by a “rogue hacker.’’ After the investigation was opened, it was determined that the breach originated from a home in which some Cardinals officials had lived.
No one with the Cardinals has been disciplined in any way to this point, as per the report.
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