Astros GM Jeff Luhnow says old passwords didn’t cause data breach
Day by day, we’re learning more about the most fascinating story in baseball right now: The St. Louis Cardinals being investigated by the FBI for hacking into a proprietary database belonging to the Houston Astros. Corporate espionage and data breaches, as you know, aren’t generally in the baseball news cycle.
It’s an interesting intersection, however, for Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, who worked in technology and engineering before beginning his career as a baseball executive. And that’s one of the reasons Luhnow is now categorically denying that the use of outdated passwords by him and members of his staff assisted the hack.
The original story on this matter, by Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times, said investigators believe the alleged data thieves within the Cardinals organization used a list of Luhnow’s old passwords (he worked for St. Louis from 2003-2011) to gain access to the Astros’ internal documents.
Nope, says Luhnow, speaking publicly on this matter for the first time to Sports Illustrated:
“That’s absolutely false,” said Luhnow. “I absolutely know about password hygiene and best practices. I’m certainly aware of how important passwords are, as well as of the importance of keeping them updated. A lot of my job in baseball, as it was in high tech, is to make sure that intellectual property is protected. I take that seriously and hold myself and those who work for me to a very high standard.”
Password hygiene, eh? Probably the first time a baseball GM has ever uttered that nifty phrase. Other matters Luhnow addressed in the SI interview:
• He said he left the Cardinals on good terms and that his move to Houston wasn’t a “bad breakup.”
• Luhnow also disputed the notion that Cardinals employees might be trying to find out if he took any of their proprietary information to Houston. “I’m very aware of intellectual property and the agreements I signed,” Luhnow told Sports Illustrated’s Ben Reiter.
[RELATED: Cardinals GM says he had no knowledge of Astros hack]
The result of the data breach, at least publicly, was documents containing Astros trade notes being leaked to the Internet last summer. There are reportedly other documents in the data breach that haven’t been leaked to the public. We don’t know what’s in those, obviously, but generally speaking, the Astros database contained things like scouting reports, medical reports and player projections.
One part of this that’s been hard to assess is the damage to the Astros. Luhnow spoke to that point, but said it hasn’t gotten in the way of the club’s rebuilding plan too much.
“At the time when it happened a year ago, it was like coming home and seeing your house has been broken into,” he said. “You feel violated when someone does that without permission. As far as whether it affected our ability to execute our plan? It’s difficult to assess the effect, but we have continued to execute our plan and we are making progress. I had to call the other 29 GMs and apologize that private notes our organization had made had been made public. Those were not fun calls to make. But I’ve made several trades since then, and I’ve had no problems getting anybody on the phone.”
The Astros are currently 39-28, the surprise leaders in the AL West and the team with the second most wins in MLB. The only team with more? The Cardinals.
More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:
– – – – – – –
Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
