4:55pm: Correa’s lawyer, Nicholas Williams, offered the following statement to Goold when reached for comment:
“Mr. Correa denies any illegal conduct. The relevant inquiry should be what information did former St. Louis Cardinals employees steal from the St. Louis Cardinals organization prior to joining the Houston Astros, and who in the Houston Astros organization authorized, consented to, or benefited from that roguish behavior.”
3:44pm: The Cardinals have fired scouting director Chris Correa for his role in the Cardinals’ breach of the Astros’ proprietary Ground Control computer network, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Lawyers for the Cardinals tell Goold that Correa had already been on an “imposed leave of absence.”
Cardinals GM John Mozeliak, Correa, and Correa’s lawyers all declined to comment, but a source close to the investigation tells Goold that Correa has admitted to illegally accessing Ground Control. Correa, however, has said that his reason for accessing the network was only to attempt to verify that Astros GM Jeff Luhnow had taken proprietary information from the Cardinals with him to his new post in Houston. According to Goold’s source, Correa did not leak any data to the public and was not responsible for additional entries to the Astros’ network. The FBI is continuing its investigation into other members of the organization, and it seems likely that others are involved, if Correa has been determined to have accessed Ground Control only one time without leaking any of the data.
The firing of Correa reveals that the breach into the Astros’ computer network goes far higher up the chain of command in the Cardinals’ front office than many had originally believed. Correa was only recently promoted to scouting director back in December after previously serving as a qualitative analyst and director of baseball operations, as Baseball America’s John Manuel wrote at the time.
“No guys, I only hacked into their system to make sure HE wasn’t doing anything wrong. I promise.”
okay, so no big deal.
This isn’t much of a story. One grumpy dude who wanted to see if his boss stole his work when he went off to Houston, one stupid boss who kept the same passwords in place when he took his work with him to Houston.
Kind of a wash, but I’m sure you’ll be able to convince a jury otherwise since most people don’t understand simple things and still probably want to call this hacking.
I mean, it IS hacking. It’s just the laziest social engineering in the world because Luhnow didn’t listen to any InfoSec person he’s ever spoken to.
This is the old is you leave your doors unlocked you deserve to be robbed or if girls wear skimpy clothes they deserve to be rapped logic. Regardless of how poor the security was Correa shouldn’t have been accessing the system.
Cool, that’s not what I said.
It’s not hacking. As the update says it looks clearly like the illegal part started with someone from the Cardinals going to the Astros with technology that the Cardinals developed (illegal, worth millions easily).
Then there’s no hacking, especially if that appropriated software had the same login technology attached with the same default logins. It’s illegal to access someone else’s stuff, but it is not hacking. Do you understand the difference?
I’m not saying anything here wasn’t illegal, just that nothing is hacking.
Actually Dave, it is a hack. A crime of this sort is derived from breaking into a computer network, which is what Correa did. Now maybe he used old passwords, maybe he used password generating software that the Cardinals used. Nonetheless it was an unauthorized entry into the network and property of the Houston Astros.
I agree that it is not “hacking,” but “hacking” also is not a crime, it’s merely a colloquialism.
The crime you’re looking for falls under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and it is called “unauthorized access to a computer system.” That much it clearly was.
You’re missing the point if you’re focused on the word “hacking” to determine if this is a “much of a story” or if a crime has been committed. A crime has been committed. The FBI is investigating and will prosecute. The Cardinals just fired their scouting director, which is a pretty level and important position. What should also not be lost here is he was promoted after he broke into the Astros’ system. Perhaps the knowledge he gained might have even led to his promotion. Yes, this is a story. It’s more a story today than it was yesterday.
sure, no big deal.
i mean, yes, what Correa did was technically a federal crime.
but other than that, no big deal….
As far ad a baseball story, it’s really not. As for the front office members of the Cardinals that were involved, yes, it’s a big deal.
Too funny! Just like the lefty media circles the wagons for liars of a past and current “dear leader” spouting nonsense and spin like is coming out of st louie with regards to this hack? It’s going to take hip waders to get through the cover up the media will throw over this one.
Need any foil?
I just find it amazing that these people who are known for their baseball intelligence, lack basic common sense.
Wait a second! Chris Correa? Maybe Carlos Corre is a mole within the Astros roster.
Seriously guys? This is what constitutes acceptable behavior just because they were able to ascertain which password he used? That’s telling a rape victim that had a lot to drink the night before that it was her fault for having too much to drink. The Cardinals(A scouting director is not some lowly front office employee and he represents the organizations) had no right to do what they did and they even further hurt the Astros by leaking trade discussions in what appears to be an attempt to embarrass Luhnow. The Cardinals should get hit hard for this with draft penalties, IFA penalties, and even possible compensation to the Astros. Anything less sets a bad precedent IMO.
wheres the like button?
He was not Scouting Director at the time. But this isn’t the Cardinals that did this. This is like the Dodgers having a player in AA teat positive for PED’s, so we say The Dodgers cheated by taking steroids.
I’m not cool with the entire scenario, but compensation? In lieu of what financial damage?
Lets start with the start, shall we?
When someone takes proprietary software to another company, that’s illegal. Bad start for the Astros!
When someone illegally accesses a system, that’s illegal. Oops, bad move for the guy with the Cardinals who may have developed the software the Astros stole in the first place.
The difference is in the (uneducated, really) response that calls it hacking, when at worst it’s unauthorized intrusion. Trying to compare this to rape is pretty sick and you should really think before you spew idiotic things on the internet, but I know you won’t.
It’s not right, but it’s also not interesting or scandalous. What should be scandalous is that the Astros may have straight up ripped off Cardinals software and information when the people who left walked out the door. That’s crazy illegal on way more counts than unauthorized intrusion and other cases have been settled for hundreds of millions of dollars, which far outweighs any baseball related draft pick penalties.
If anything, and this turns into an actual case, you can expect to see the Astros get sued into oblivion if MLB allows it. Instead, everyone will probably back down and have a nice conversation with a settlement that lets both teams chill out and everyone walk away without turning this into a Cardinals vs Astros lawsuit, which it easily could.
The Cardinals did their part and fired the guy who did the wrong thing. The Astros need to shore up their own end and prove that they didn’t steal tech from the Cardinals, which it sounds like will be tough to prove if a Cardinals employee had the default passwords to the system, which tends to only happen when you know, it’s the same software. Which would make it crazy illegal for the Astros to have done, and it would absolutely have been done with Lunhow’s knowledge.
Hacking vs unauthorized intrusion is semantics and nothing more. Illegal is illegal. If the Cardinals even suspected of software being stolen, you report that, you don’t take it into your own hands. Don’t like the rape comparison? Not that anyone was comparing the situation to be as sick as a rape, but the reasoning that this is not as bad because it wasn’t a true “hack” stands. If you want a different analogy, here’s what you’re arguing: Say you suspected your neighbor has something you’re missing. One day you see your neighbor leave his/her house without locking the door, and you go in and find said item. Yeah, your neighbor is in trouble, but what are you going to say to the police? “Oh yeah, I went into their house to find my thing, but I didn’t really break into the house because the door was already open” does NOT make you right. Illegal is illegal is illegal.
And you can prove that he stole their system? If you can’t, you whole second paragraph is nonsense. Utter nonsense.
The analogy I used was fair. It wasn’t saying rape is as bad as hacking. You’re being intellectually dishonest when you say that. You know for a fact that analogy was made in order to show how in both instances the victim is being blamed. In the case of the girl, she’s being blamed for drinking too much. In the case of the hacking, Luhnow and the Astros are being blamed for no coming up with a better password.
As for paragraph number 3, it’s absurd. You must be a Cardinal fan. The only team that has been proven to have done wrong in this whole situation is the Cardinals. Continuing to blame the victim is laughable. Stop blaming the victim. Take your Cardinal colored glasses off and blame the culprit of a federal crime(the Cardinals). The Cardinals had this guy under their employ in a major front office position. They will be punished and should be punished. If this were any other team but your favorite, you would be changing your tune.
In conclusion, what you just said was ridiculous and not worth even reading but I did you a favor and did so. Enjoy!
“The Cardinals did their part and fired the guy who did the wrong thing. The Astros need to shore up their own end and prove that they didn’t steal tech from the Cardinals”
Oh yeah.. That plays up really well.. Blame the team/side that got attacked/hacked!
Welcome the “THE SPIN ZONE” HAHAHA!!
Keep going Dave, every post is more pure comedy!
My logic says the password break in was only to enable embarrassing info to be leaked publicly. Nothing else would essentially serve the Cardinals. A theft would be hard to prove, because it’s effect would likely be hard to quantify. I’m guessing many teams systems look very similar… Maybe in the same sense that most fast food operations at very similar. It would make sense that Luhnow would repeat certain concepts. How is it possible to own math? I mean…I know this is possible, but what would Houston need to do to alter their system just enough from the Cardinals to make it unique in legal terms?
I would even go with the possibility most team’s software is built up the exact same proprietary software all around the league Red_Line and whichever Cardinals employee(s) hacked into the Houston system were well aware of this from the beginning.
Like you wrote.. Is it possible to own math? I also believe MANY teams have modified the same.. Exact software and multiple employees of the Cardinals organization are going to be unearthed as responsible for this.. The reason(s)? Jealousy? Personal dislike? We just need to hope various media outlets are not able to cover this up and there will be some who dig into this..
Cardinal fans are trying to cover it up.. We see it here and how many will remember this topic when it blows up, or try and whitewash it? it will become quite humorous to those of us saying.. “I told you so”…
I can’t seem to reply to your post below…but here’s my take.
Luhnow was likely “difficult” to work with for many in the Cards organization. He leaves and some angry former underlings cracked his system. Worst case scenario is that knowledge of the Astros memo system could be used in a potential deal between the two teams.
My own personal experience from the game makes me feel that it’s a wash between two groups of people that are just two in a large sea of people with a sense of entitlement.
Nothing to do with our ongoing little discussion, just an agreement with the fact have noticed on occasion the lack of a “reply” button on various topics/posts where have wanted to make one…
sometimes there have been LONG, ongoing discussions and sometimes there have been very few posts made at all. Not sure how to go about further keeping track of all of this, or who is the one in charge nowadays of the mods.
Think we should approach Tim and further burden him with all of this? I really hate bothering him every time I send him an email now, though he generally responds fairly quick.
I honestly believe Tim is trying to adjust to a new system that will be better in the future with an app…even though I despise the permission grants on most apps. I feel like any comment I make is beating a dead horse…I was active in the initial commentary when this switch was made…and I believe things will be better…simply because it’ll be in the best interest for them to be better. This could have been probably better timed. My real issue is that it’s become a lot of work just to utilize the site…and while I enjoy it enough to work through the construction… Many people won’t and will bow out. This isn’t the only place that baseball rumors are being discussed….and many other sites continue to use discuss. Maybe it would have been best if possible to set this system up for the staff and hash it out internally before tossing it to the lions. None of us are benefitted by their needs…much the same as a popular restaurant that shifts menus…it becomes a different place.
All that said….I think it’ll be in Tim’s interest to make changes…which he’s trying to do…they can’t happen overnight…. But I do wish a forum for input would have been created prior to a launch….it seems like many of these peccadillos could have been ironed out before a launch. I’m a little surprised the questions needed to be asked…they’d be common sense to any regular commenter….a reply button….a like button….a functioning notification system…this current setup was started with none of these in place. As far as emailing Tim…He’s trying to do the best he can and is aware….to me it just comes off as little kids saying..”are we there yet?” Either it happens and it works out great…or it doesn’t and the site dies for all intents and purposes.
OK…I’m with you on all counts, but didn’t the Cardinals basically blow their case for intellectual property theft by acquiring that knowledge by illegal means? It’s not as if someone can testify in court to the theft and then say they committed a crime in obtaining that info.
It really made no sense for whoever is responsible with the Cardinals to leak publicly. They could have easily broke in using a third party information PI and then gone from there with a case.
Also, would having a password TO a system reveal the structure of the system? I have an email account, but cannot tell you how my provider makes it work.
1) No one is alleging Luhnow took the software to Houston. That’s not the thing of value anyway – we’re talking about a database. It’s the “data” part that everyone’s worried about, not the “base.”
To that end, Luhnow – who oversaw the creation of the Redbird database in STL – is perfectly in the clear if he wants to create a similar database in Houston. The no-no would be if he took proprietary information with him (private scouting reports, statistical data that was collected using proprietary tools, etc.). We don’t know whether that happened – the guy who was just fired suggests it did, but what else would you expect?
2. Correa is not credited with developing the software (which was not stolen by the Astros, see #1 above). Correa joined the Cards in 2009, when the database was already in use.
3. “Unauthorized intrusion” is still a crime, which is, you know, why the FBI is investigating.
4. “That’s crazy illegal on way more counts than unauthorized intrusion…” – this statement is crazy false. Taking proprietary information from your former workplace to your new workplace is not illegal. It is unethical, but the burden of proof is ridiculously high to criminally prosecute, which is why these matters are usually dealt with in civil court. Whereas hacking (or unauthorized intrusion) is, as mentioned above, illegal.
5. No one from the Cardinals is suing anyone from the Astros, that you can most definitely NOT expect to see. The other way around is slightly more possible, but still very unlikely.
6. Both the FBI and internal investigations are ongoing, so it would be premature to say the Cardinals took care of it, let’s all go home. There’s more to come.
7. The Astros do not need to prove anything. The only person suggesting the Astros stole anything is the guy just fired by the Cardinals (and his attorney), which, you know. But ask yourself: if the Astros DID steal anything from the Cardinals, do you really think they would alert the FBI? Seriously, think this one through. I think someone stole something that I previously stole, am I really calling the police?
8. “Default passwords” seems to be entirely made up by you. The conventional wisdom is that Luhnow either kept his same password or the changes he did make were easy to guess. For the record, Luhnow has denied that he kept the same passwords.
9. You wouldn’t happen to be from St. Louis, would you?
Brooks…Dave won’t have an answer in the same way that all those brewer turtles had blind faith when braun got caught the SECOND time. But I love your break down …
The proprietary evaluation part might be hard to prove…the math could be reconstructed for analytics, and the scouting reports could virtually be memorized. There are actually likely people here that can give you a rundown on almost their entire favorite organization. And if memory itself didn’t work for Luhnow…he took a big piece of the scouting structure to Houston with him.
The Cards are going to need to be heavily detailed in displaying what way anything was stolen that couldn’t just be logic. I’ll give the example of the weather report…Tune in 3 local stations…they will all generally give the same forecast… Their technology will be similar.
I’m just curious about the data? What data could be stolen that couldn’t be recreated building a new database.
like telling*
The Cardinal Way….uh huh.
Is anyone else having trouble posting on this site, logging in? I see very few comments on these articles so I have to think there are lots of people locked out. Have the administrators not noticed the lack of comments? Are the IT guys aware?
I believe some of it is the notification system is essentially disabled…I have to manually check for responses.
Basically they went into their neighbors basement because they thought he stole their lawnmower
And then, after failing to discover the lawnmower, somebody else (according to Correa, anyway) broke in using the same method to take photographs of the neighbors’ financial documents.
Correa’s story appears to be that the Astros did have the lawnmower. Which could make things a little interesting. We will know by how far the Astros want to push this.
if the Cardinals had any such information they’d have already filed a claim. the info Correa claimed was leaked after his initial ‘investigation’ happened about a year ago, and apparently the FBI was only investigating that.
If the Cardinals had any real reason to believe the Astros were guilty of anything… well, they could have had a judge do the investigating for them simply by filing a legal claim listing their reasons. So my guess is the Astros are going to push this to the hilt because the Cardinals clearly have nothing like what Correa claims they do.
Why do you think Correa would take his own illegal activity to his boss?
Correa may have thought he found something, but that doesn’t mean he did. Clearly some people in the Cardinals had a problem with either Luhnow personally or something he did when he left, so there’s no guarantee they were looking at the ‘evidence’ with a rational mind.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Luhnow left in 2011 and the Cardinals haven’t leveled any charges of wrongdoing in all that time. Even after they had pretty much full access to ‘ground control’.
This looks an awful lot like somebody trying to make smoke and then saying ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’
This saga reminds me of Coming to America, where McDowell’s knocked off. McDonald’s. Soul-glo!
Man….this commenting system is harsh right now….it locks and android up to the point I bet a Cardinal scouting coordinator couldn’t even get it working.
They have the golden arches, I have the golden arcs…. My buns have no sesame seeds…
Re the commenting system, maybe they Cardinal scouting coordinator is sabotaging the commenting system so we can’t post…….
I’m curious about the details of the databases. To me…if you took 5 auto engineers and turned them loose…they’d come back with 5 vehicles that’d likely look similar. I mean…Luhnow has the same aim in Houston that he had in STL…. He’s going to naturally use a similar process. It’s a bit like STL claiming they own 2+2=4. At least until I hear more,details.
With all the hacking of federal systems, the FBI has higher priority missions than some silly baseball scouting reports. This sounds like a personal vendetta, possibly engineered through contacts among very rich guys with nothing better to do.
Let me guess:
1 – Correa confessed to the front office at some point.
2 – Correa was fully functional until the end of the draft on June 10.
3 – Correa was put on an “imposed leave of absence.”
4 – Correa was fired on July 2nd.
That’s clearly the “Cardinal Way.”
The Cardinals stole info, not being investigated by the Commisioner but by the FBI, Rebbirds are thieves, they will go down, It’s not math, it is patented algorithyms, Cards will go down for FEDERAL Corporate espionage and wire fraud and Luhnow will sue Cards for millions.