First there was Spygate. Then there was Deflategate. Now the sports world has Hackgate. At least that’s what I’m calling it as it appears that you make a news item more sexy and appealing if you add the word “gate” to the end of another word (as in Watergate… Though that was the actual name of the hotel that was broken into by Richard Nixon’s friends).
In any case, what I am calling Hackgate has the St. Louis Cardinals who are one of the best teams in Major League Baseball perpetrating a hack of the Houston Astros who are one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. Here’s what the New York Times had to say on this:
Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals employees broke into a network of the Astros that housed special databases the team had built, law enforcement officials said. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, said the officials, who were not authorized to discuss a continuing investigation
The investigators in question are Major League Baseball and the FBI. What’s more interesting is what sports gossip website Deadspin had to say:
The Cardinals front-office executives who hacked into the Astros’ database are extremely dumb. You can’t even give them credit for being l337 H4x0rs because all these dummies did was use one of the old passwords Astros GM Jeff Luhnow used when he worked for the Cardinals, and they did it from their own goddamn home, which made it very easy for FBI to track them down. Here is a tip: If you’re going to commit corporate espionage, don’t do it from your home computer. Go find, like, an internet cafe or something.
Jeff Luhnow and his Astros colleagues are pretty dumb. They helped build a proprietary database for storing all sorts of important baseball operations data when they worked for the Cardinals, and then just ported the damn thing over the Astros and slapped a new name on it when they jumped ship. That’s not exceptionally stupid, but what is exceptionally stupid is the fact that they didn’t bother to change their passwords, meaning that all anyone needed to “hack” this proprietary database of sensitive information was access to Luhnow’s old master list of passwords, which still belonged to the Cardinals.
For those who don’t speak l337, l337 H4x0rs means elite hackers.
Wow. That’s pretty dumb all around. This is a how to guide of how not to “hack” someone and how to open yourself up to being pwned. But back to the matter at hand. I’m shocked that something like this hasn’t happened before now. After all, pro sports is highly competitive and seeing as I illustrated a couple of examples above of notable cheating scandals, I am shocked that this hasn’t moved over to cyberspace until now. I suspect that this will not be the last time you see something like this. Hopefully the next one will be more sophisticated.
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This entry was posted on June 17, 2015 at 9:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Baseball Team “Hacks” Another Baseball Team…… Seriously
First there was Spygate. Then there was Deflategate. Now the sports world has Hackgate. At least that’s what I’m calling it as it appears that you make a news item more sexy and appealing if you add the word “gate” to the end of another word (as in Watergate… Though that was the actual name of the hotel that was broken into by Richard Nixon’s friends).
In any case, what I am calling Hackgate has the St. Louis Cardinals who are one of the best teams in Major League Baseball perpetrating a hack of the Houston Astros who are one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball. Here’s what the New York Times had to say on this:
Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals employees broke into a network of the Astros that housed special databases the team had built, law enforcement officials said. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, said the officials, who were not authorized to discuss a continuing investigation
The investigators in question are Major League Baseball and the FBI. What’s more interesting is what sports gossip website Deadspin had to say:
The Cardinals front-office executives who hacked into the Astros’ database are extremely dumb. You can’t even give them credit for being l337 H4x0rs because all these dummies did was use one of the old passwords Astros GM Jeff Luhnow used when he worked for the Cardinals, and they did it from their own goddamn home, which made it very easy for FBI to track them down. Here is a tip: If you’re going to commit corporate espionage, don’t do it from your home computer. Go find, like, an internet cafe or something.
Jeff Luhnow and his Astros colleagues are pretty dumb. They helped build a proprietary database for storing all sorts of important baseball operations data when they worked for the Cardinals, and then just ported the damn thing over the Astros and slapped a new name on it when they jumped ship. That’s not exceptionally stupid, but what is exceptionally stupid is the fact that they didn’t bother to change their passwords, meaning that all anyone needed to “hack” this proprietary database of sensitive information was access to Luhnow’s old master list of passwords, which still belonged to the Cardinals.
For those who don’t speak l337, l337 H4x0rs means elite hackers.
Wow. That’s pretty dumb all around. This is a how to guide of how not to “hack” someone and how to open yourself up to being pwned. But back to the matter at hand. I’m shocked that something like this hasn’t happened before now. After all, pro sports is highly competitive and seeing as I illustrated a couple of examples above of notable cheating scandals, I am shocked that this hasn’t moved over to cyberspace until now. I suspect that this will not be the last time you see something like this. Hopefully the next one will be more sophisticated.
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This entry was posted on June 17, 2015 at 9:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.