Tag Archive for: League

Minnesota man charged in hacking MLB and for trying to extort the league

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A Minnesota man has been charged with hacking into computer systems used by Major League Baseball and trying to extort the league for $150,000, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York said Thursday.In emails with an MLB executive, Joshua Streit, 30, threatened to publicize the vulnerability that he used to access the league’s website for streaming live games before asking for $150,000 for finding the technology flaw, according to charging documents.Streit allegedly renewed his extortion attempt in September, at a time of heightened scrutiny for the MLB as it was preparing for the playoffs. The news comes ahead of Game 3 of the World Series between the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves.A Twitter account listed in the criminal complaint as belonging to Streit did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. James Becker, an attorney listed for Streit in court records, did not respond to requests for comment.The charges against Streit, who is also known as Josh Brody, include wire fraud, illegally hacking into a computer for the purposes of fraud and “sending interstate threats with the intent to extort.” The maximum sentence for each individual charge ranges from two to 20 years in prison.Streit is accused of illegally streaming copyrighted live games from the MLB, National Basketball Association, National Football League and the National Hockey League. To do that, prosecutors allege, Streit used stolen login credentials to access the sports’ websites and stream live games to his own website for profit.One of the sports leagues lost almost $3 million because of Streit’s actions, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a press release.A LinkedIn profile listed in the complaint as belonging to Streit describes him as a software engineer living in the Minneapolis area.During an initial court appearance Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, a judge ordered “temporary detention” for Streit pending a Nov. 1 hearing, according to court documents.A spokesperson for the MLB declined to comment. Neil Boland, the league’s chief information security officer, did not respond to requests for comment.The MLB is no stranger to…

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How the league secures the ballot from hacking

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Major League Baseball fans could choose a U.S. president and local elected officials, but for 12 seasons, they couldn’t be trusted to set the All-Star Game roster. Cincinnati Redlegs fans committed a form of voter fraud in 1957 when, goaded by media outlets, they gamed the system to stack the deck.

Then-MLB Commissioner Ford Frick was not pleased and he disenfranchised millions.

The right to vote for All-Stars was restored in 1970, ushering in first an era of paper ballots, then a hybrid of paper and online voting, and going fully online in 2015 for the midsummer classic held in, you guessed it, Cincinnati.

Voting rights were at the core of MLB’s decision this year to move the All-Star Game and related events to Denver from Georgia, a state that in late March changed its voting laws in ways that Democrats and the U.S. Department of Justice believe will disproportionately affect Black voters but Republicans defend as fair and an expansion of access.

Comparatively speaking, the All-Star Game vote is low stakes, but MLB, like state governments, changes the process over time to keep ballots accessible and safe from ballot-stuffing.

Sometimes.

“I’d only been … writing software for three years, something like that, so it hadn’t been that long,” said Chris Nandor, who in 1999 hacked the All-Star Game vote. “That kind of tells you it wasn’t that complicated.”

At the beginning

Maybe the best place to start this story is in the Negro Leagues. The first East-West Game — what the Negro Leagues’ All-Star Game was called — took place on Sept. 10, 1933, about two months after the first MLB All-Star Game.

But the precedent the East-West Game set likely had a wider influence: Its first year saw about 1 million votes come in thanks to ballots that were printed in Black newspapers across the country.

MLB initially gave fans the right to vote in 1933 and ’34 (though the league told The Post  “it is unclear how that was handled”) before giving it to the All-Star Game managers until 1947.

Georgetown history professor Chandra Manning said the Negro League’s motivation for fan voting was in part to “democratize emotional investment in the…

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AWS Teams with the National Hockey League to be the Official Cloud Infrastructure Provider of the NHL

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SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb 10, 2021–

Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that it has entered into an agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL) to become the Official Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning Infrastructure Provider of the NHL.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here:

AWS will help the NHL bring fans closer to the ice with new viewing experiences and in-depth stats and analytics built on AWS services. (Graphic: Business Wire)

By tapping into the breadth and depth of AWS services, the NHL will be able to automate video processing and content delivery in the cloud and leverage its Puck and Player Tracking (PPT) System, which runs on AWS cloud infrastructure, to better capture the details of game play for its fans, teams, and media partners. The NHL will also build an enterprise video platform on AWS to aggregate video, data, and related applications into one central repository that will enable easier search and retrieval of archival video footage, give broadcasters instant access to NHL content for syndication and licensing, and facilitate the creation and delivery of new in-game analyses, predictions, and video highlights to enhance mobile, online, and broadcast experiences.

The NHL will work with the Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab to apply AWS’s deep portfolio of machine learning services to game video and official NHL data – including data from the NHL’s new Puck and Player Tracking (PPT) System and from the NHL’s Hockey Information & Tracking System (HITS) real-time stats – to develop and share advanced game analytics and metrics that take fans deeper into the game. In addition, the NHL intends to use AWS Elemental Media Services to develop and manage a cloud-based HD and 4K video content delivery system that will provide a complete view of the game to NHL officials, coaches, players, and fans. Powered by AWS, the system will encode, process, store, and transmit game footage from a series of new camera angles to provide continuous video feeds that capture plays and events outside the field of…

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Premier League clubs to tighten cyber security methods after Manchester United hack

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Premier League clubs are expected to tighten cyber security methods as investigators warn a hack on Manchester United is just the tip of an iceberg.

United are believed to be facing a seven-figure ransom demand over the attack, which has left the club unable to yet fully restore its computer systems. GCHQ cyber security agents have been called in to help.

The National Cyber Security Centre recently published a report showing 70 per cent of major sports organisations are targeted by hackers every 12 months.

Ciaran Martin, a professor at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School, told Telegraph Sport on Friday night how he saw attacks on sporting organisations rise while he was chief executive at the NCSC.

“The risk to sport was on the up, not markedly, but incrementally, because of the realisation by potential attackers of rich sources of data and money that might be available from sporting organisations,” he said. “It’s big business, as we all know.”

Manchester City say it is a “matter of public record” that they have also been repeatedly targeted. In February, an IT worker was arrested amid claims he got players’ personal details and records of confidential transfer talks from Pep Guardiola’s email account. Last week, it also emerged British athletes were among hundreds of female sports stars and celebrities whose personal photographs had been breached in an iCloud attack.

“Sports organisations are at risk from cyber attacks for two reasons,” Martin, one of the leading figures in the UK’s fight against cyber crime, said. Nation-state attacks – such as Russia’s breach against the World Anti-Doping Agency in August 2016 – are high profile, but rare, he explained. “The other, which looks more likely here – although I must stress I don’t know the details because I’m not in Government any more – would appear to be a standard criminal ransom attempt to extort money by encrypting data or otherwise compromising data.”

The Football Association beefed up its security ahead of the World Cup in Russia in 2018, but many Premier League clubs have yet to bring their security levels in line with some other sectors.

Government has no powers to…

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