It has been reported that successful US baseball team, St. Louis Cardinals, allegedly hacked into the internal networks of rival team Houston Astros, to steal closely guarded information about player personnel. Following this news, Ken Westin, Senior Security Analyst at Tripwire gives insight into this type of attack:
“Hacking isn’t always about stealing credit cards, but can also be about access to information to provide a competitive edge. We have increasingly seen this behaviour in business where hackers steal and sell information to competitors or investors to give them an edge. A baseball team hacking another team is a logical extension of this type of attack, as it is in the end a business as well with high financial stakes, by accessing information on players their goal is to give themselves a competitive edge.”