Texan baseball team the Houston Astros suffered a data breach where internal communications on trades were leaked.
According to Yahoo Sports, hackers accessed the Astro’s internal communications database and released ten months’ worth of notes about trade talks between the Astros and other MLB teams. This included high demands, counter offers and scenarios that never took place.
The documents were leaked in two parts to a site called Anonbin with one part dealing with last season’s trade deadline, and another with offseason trade talks. While there are details on trades which never happened, the Astros were informed a month ago about the leak, and improved their security in an aim to prevent further hacks into their system.
In a statement, the Astros said: “Last month, we were made aware that proprietary information held on Astros’ servers and in Astros’ applications had been illegally obtained. Upon learning of the security breach, we immediately notified MLB security who, in turn, notified the FBI. Since that time, we have been working closely with MLB security and the FBI to the determine the party, or parties, responsible. This information was illegally obtained and published, and we intend to prosecute those involved to the fullest extent.
“It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that an outside source has illegally obtained confidential information. While it does appear that some of the content released was based on trade conversations, a portion of the material was embellished or completely fabricated.”
This shows how all businesses and verticals need to consider security and take it seriously. In a way, this could have been worse as if it had been live data, then the Astros would be dire straits. Instead, they have ended up looking embarrassed in front of the rest of the baseball world as financial details have been revealed, as well as potential targets. There are enterprise and free solutions available to resolve this, I suspect other sports teams will up their game after this – editor
