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Communications Idle

Baseball's Newest Anti-Cheating Technology: Encrypted Transmitters for Catchers' Signals (theverge.com) 75

Posted by EditorDavid from the pitcher-perfect dept.
First Major League Baseball experimented with automated umpiring of balls and strikes in the minor leagues.

Now the Verge reports they're trying a time-saving tactic that might also make it harder to cheat: Baseball has a sign stealing problem — or at least, a technological one, seeing how reading another team's pitches is technically legal, but using Apple Watches or telephoto cameras and then suspiciously banging on trash cans is very much not. But soon the MLB may try fighting fire with fire: on August 3rd, it plans to begin testing an encrypted wireless communication device that replaces the traditional flash of fingers with button taps, according to ESPN.

The device, from a startup called PitchCom, will be tested in the Low-A West minor league first. As you'd expect from something that's relaying extremely basic signals, it's not a particularly complicated piece of kit: one wristband transmitter for the catcher with nine buttons to signal "desired pitch and location," which sends an encrypted audio signal to receivers that can squeeze into a pitcher's cap and a catcher's helmet.

The receivers use bone-conduction technology, so they don't necessarily need to be up against an ear, and might theoretically be harder to eavesdrop on. (Bone conduction stimulates bones in your head instead of emitting audible sound.)
"MLB hopes the devices will cut down on time spent by pitchers stepping off the rubber and changing signals," reports the Associated Press, noting another interesting new rule. "A team may continue to use the system if the opposing club's device malfunctions."

But don't worry about that, reports ESPN: Hacking the system, the company says, is virtually impossible. PitchCom uses an industrial grade encryption algorithm and transmits minimal data digitally, making it mathematically impossible for someone to decrypt intercepted transmissions, according to the company.
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Baseball's Newest Anti-Cheating Technology: Encrypted Transmitters for Catchers' Signals More

Baseball's Newest Anti-Cheating Technology: Encrypted Transmitters for Catchers' Signals

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  • Better idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @07:40AM (#61620739) Journal
    Why don't they just use non-standard hand signals instead?

    • Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @07:47AM (#61620749)

      Why don't they just use non-standard hand signals instead?

      Or perhaps since a game has turned into a corrupt monstrosity, don't even bother playing.

      It's not merely sad it has to come to this. It's fucking pathetic.

      • Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:07AM (#61621103)

        Or perhaps since a game has turned into a corrupt monstrosity, don't even bother playing.

        We can contribute to the solution by not watching. I haven't seen a MLB game in more than 20 years. My fellow Americans feel the same, as viewership has been declining for over a decade.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 )

          Or perhaps since a game has turned into a corrupt monstrosity, don't even bother playing.

          We can contribute to the solution by not watching. I haven't seen a MLB game in more than 20 years. My fellow Americans feel the same, as viewership has been declining for over a decade.

          And similar declines have started for football. Turns out the WokeFL ain't as popular as anticipated.

        • I gave up on MLB with the first strike. The DH bullshit in the AL doesn't help either.
      • At this point, they might as well adopt the other "catcher's" signals. [refinery29.com]

    • Re:Better idea (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dvice ( 6309704 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @08:24AM (#61620835)

      Narrow AI can easily learn what each signal means (you can find Youtube videos of this used in actual game). But it doesn't actually matter what you do to hide the signals. Narrow AI can learn just by watching the thrower (or was it pitcher?) facial expressions or movements about which signal he received. Humans simply can not beat Narrow AI.

      • The only thing that knows which pitch is coming is the pitcher. While Narrow AI may help predict the probability of a certain pitch....it is the pitcher who will always make that final decision as they throw the ball. The difference between a fastball and a changeup is only 2 fingers. As long as human execute the play, narrow AI will always play catchup
        • Are you sure about this? I am not a high-level baseball player but I'm pretty sure that the pitcher and catcher need to be synchronized so that the catcher can "frame" the pitch. If the catcher has to move the glove a significant distance, there is a risk of a passed ball and also that may move the ball out of the strike zone confusing the umpire so that strikes are called as balls. I think you might be oversimplifying the game.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cederic ( 9623 )

            So get more competent catchers and throw strikes not balls.

            Is that so hard?

            I think you might be overcomplicating the game. Man stands at plate.
            Ball is thrown above plate at hittable height. Man misses ball: Strike.
            Ball isn't thrown above plate at hittable height. Man misses ball: Ball.

            I know it's a shit game but there's no need to try and complicate it. Just play cricket instead.

    • Sportsmen stupid.

    • Or, just don't bother doing anything. Why should "stealing" signs be "illegal" at all? In football, if the quarterback calls an audible at the scrimmage line; the other team can hear it. In other sports, like wrestling (Actual wrestling, not WWF/WCW.), the coaches shout their instructions at the competitors from the sidelines, often loud enough that even the spectators can hear everything. Why should baseball be special vs the others?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Why should "stealing" signs be "illegal" at all?... Why should baseball be special vs the others?

        Because they (MLB) decided that they want to keep the communications between the catcher and pitcher somewhat private. Sign stealing isn't inherently against the rules. But using anything electronic/mechanical to capture, interpret, and communicate the opposing teams signals is against the rules. The short answer to your question, "why should stealing signs be illegal?", is "because that's how the MLB wants to run their business."

      • Or, just don't bother doing anything. Why should "stealing" signs be "illegal" at all? In football, if the quarterback calls an audible at the scrimmage line; the other team can hear it. In other sports, like wrestling (Actual wrestling, not WWF/WCW.), the coaches shout their instructions at the competitors from the sidelines, often loud enough that even the spectators can hear everything. Why should baseball be special vs the others?

        Baseball's rules are finely tuned over a century to allow for competitive play. As the Houston Astros demonstrated, effective sign stealing shifts the advantage to the hitter. Baseball would still be playable, but the game changes significantly.

        Quarterback don't communicate the same information as pitchers. In football, the play is communicated in the huddle, in secret supposedly with no possibility of snooping. Audibles are occasional changes that might be bluffs, all with a high degree of information

      • I don't know that most fans are really complaining about sign stealing, which is not itself illegal. The general fan anger is against the general direction of baseball toward a technological arms race to either cheat or brush right up on the edge of cheating. Baseball fans fall, almost by definition, somewhere along the traditionalist end of the spectrum where sports are concerned. Unfortunately, MLB has apparently decided to address this particular concern with its own technical solution that, like an awfu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Why don't they just use non-standard hand signals instead?

      They do.

      Every team has a set of unique hand signals representing the pitches they like thrown.

      The problem is, it's turned into a sport where the goal is to capture the signals and then decode them. Usually the key is to make sure the pitcher is the only one that can see them but the advent of huge telephoto lenses mean you can be fairly distant away and still capture the signal with ease.

      Then came the decoding - where each team goes through hours of

  • Agreed pathetic, on multiple fronts. It is like, okay baseball teams are totally unethical and corrupt. Let's throw money at the cheating and call it advancement. And there is the New Baseball, where the attack surface is the pitcher's skull. "Hacking the system is mathematically impossible," said no honest vendor ever. Only this time it will be bouncing microwaves off the catcher's and pitcher's heads, or some other silly hack. You really don't even need the pitcher. Just figure out which button the catcher is pressing by illuminating his hand with radar and AI recog.. done.

  • I hope these PitchCom guys are randomly padding their packets as once you work out the packet length of each kind of pitch the system is broken.

    • "Industrial grade" encryption (surprised they didn't go with 'military grade'), what're the odds they're using it with ECC?
      From the last linked article, "players found wearing a receiver while batting will be ejected" which sure gives me a lot of confidence.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tgeek ( 941867 )
        "military grade" effectively means "built by the lowest bidder" . . . can't have that for our national pastime!
      • In particular "Hacking the system, the company says, is virtually impossible. PitchCom uses an industrial grade encryption algorithm and transmits minimal data digitally" means it'll be broken with about a weeks' effort once someone takes the time to look at it. Of it's "military-grade" but done by non-military guys it's a few days' effort. If its patented or proprietary it's a few hours' effort. If it's merely unbreakable it's under an hour to break.

  • Baseball hasnâ(TM)t been exciting since the 1970s when the MLB strong armed the industry. Great film if have not seen, I almost forgot there were independent teams playing mlb teams.
    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt344... [imdb.com]

  • Why change the physical layer? Just add symmetric encryption on top of the sign language. Change keys every match and voila, done.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      With the cameras and other tech available today someone up in a stats-room watching a feed of the signals could decode the "new" signals in less than 2 innings. That's the hardest part to crack down on, a normal human likely couldn't decode the signals that fast, but a nerd in front of a computer could do it with an incredibly small sample size. Making the "code" significantly complicated enough that a human couldn't reliably decode it without having the key would likely make it too difficult even if you k
  • With WiFi a common hacking tactic is to get a client to de-auth, which forces it to re-authenticate and you can grab the handshake.

    With this device, just keep sending de-auth's to it. If it's not standard wifi with an encryption layer, then it should be even easier to hack.

  • DES (Score:3)

    by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @09:12AM (#61620973) Homepage

    DES uses an industrial grade encryption algorithm and transmits minimal data digitally, making it mathematically impossible for someone to decrypt intercepted transmissions, according to the company.

    ROT13 uses an industrial grade encryption algorithm and transmits minimal data digitally, making it mathematically impossible for someone to decrypt intercepted transmissions, according to the company.

    AES-Implemented-Incorrectly uses an industrial grade encryption algorithm and transmits minimal data digitally, making it mathematically impossible for someone to decrypt intercepted transmissions, according to the company.

    At least I didn't see anything about atoms in the universe or mentions of heat-death. Seesh.

  • Needs CIA, Not Just C (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @09:41AM (#61621031)
    Going ‘old school’ for a moment here We need to think about Integrity and Availability, not just Confidentiality. Yes, I know that’s a bit old-fashioned.

    It isn’t going to be enough to simply encrypt the traffic between the parties, for a couple of reasons.

    First, because a MitM (Man in the Middle) attack might be possible if the transmission encryption is poor. This would allow a malicious party to send false signals, confusing the crap out of everyone. Unless the end-points have got some robust pre-game mutual authentication, the process is vulnerable.

    Second - and much more likely - because anyone in the vicinity who knew the broadcast frequency and had a decent and well-disguised transmitter could simply point it at one of the parties and flood the location with white noise on that frequency. This would make it effectively impossible for the endpoints to force a signal through the noise, rendering the whole solution DOA.

    A really sneaky Team would go one further and set up their entire field with disguised transmitters - i.e. built in to the dug-out - which they could turn on when their opponents wanted to use the system.

    Yes, I dare say that the impacted Team would be ‘up in arms’ if this were to happen. What are they going to do? Vacate the field and forfeit the game?

  • Mathematically impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zarmanto ( 884704 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @09:53AM (#61621057) Journal

    ... making it mathematically impossible for someone to decrypt ...

    Well, we all know what happens when you make something "mathematically impossible" to hack.

    (Someone promptly hacks it, of course.)

  • How is being intelligent and reading the other teams signals cheating exactly?

  • Won't anybody think of the Umpires? (Score:3)

    by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:05AM (#61621095)

    I have seen several games in just the last week which were basically decided by ludicrous non-reviewable umpiring mistakes, mostly ball/strike decisions of various kinds (one was a checked-swing call). In some cases the Umps were equal-opportunity, in others their decisions seemed to be one-sided. A couple of years ago people were saying that the technology was there to mostly put the Home Plate Umpire out to grass, but it has still not been introduced.

    • Re:Won't anybody think of the Umpires? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:30AM (#61621149)
      Because the umpires are part of the game, too. They can have a good game or a bad game just like the players. That's what makes it interesting and a human endeavor rather than watching a computer or robot perform a task (which isn't as interesting). It's why there are human drivers in F1, for example.
      • That's quite an asinine take you have there. Officials repeatedly making highly dubious calls do not make games more interesting. Getting the calls right and letting the players (the ones that actually make it a human endeavor) set their own fortunes based on their skills and previously agreed upon rules is what makes the games interesting. Maybe that's why world series viewership [wikipedia.org] have been on the decline for 50 years?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          It is in the players hands. The catcher tries to frame the pitch, the pitcher tries to expand the strike zone, the batter tries to shrink it.

      • Good days versus bad days aren't the issue. Bias is. And I'm fairly sure it's institutional bias. It doesn't even need to be bias for or against a specific team. In fact, I'm sure it isn't. But consider: A few years back in the NBA, the Golden State Warriors were playing against Cleveland's team in the finals. At first it looked like a sweep, with the Warriors leading 3-0 going into game 4. Then, suddenly, the officiating changed dramatically, with fouls called against the Warriors left and right wh

      • Because the umpires are part of the game, too. They can have a good game or a bad game just like the players. That's what makes it interesting and a human endeavor rather than watching a computer or robot perform a task (which isn't as interesting). It's why there are human drivers in F1, for example.

        Umpires may be part of the game, but they are not players in the game. The outcome of a game should be determined by the skill of the players, not the visual acuity of the umpires!

  • Or maybe... (Score:3)

    by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:32AM (#61621163)
    The pitcher could just pick where they want to throw the ball on their own? Or does this make it too difficult on the catcher?

    In general I'm not a fan of adding more technology to baseball. It's the tradition that makes it interesting, although they have to do something to reduce the strikeout ratio. Went to a minor league game a few weeks back and 74% of the outs in the game were strikeouts. So boring! Maybe stealing the signals would be one solution to this...
    • Well, if the idea behind the pitch is 'make sure the other guy can't hit it,' the catcher also has a problem trying to catch it. So catcher suggests a pitch, the pitcher accepts or declines, repeat, until they're in agreement. Then the catcher hopefully catches the ball.
    • It not only makes it difficult for the catcher, but it almost guarantees that strikes will get called as balls. Imagine the catcher's hand is on the left side of the plate. A ball sails over the right-hand corner. The pitcher has to move their hand so wildly to catch the ball that they are three feet past the right-hand side when their body stops moving. That blocks the umpire's view *and* carries the ball outside of the strike zone. So now what? You see the catcher move wildly. They are well outside

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Wtf? How about the umpires learn how to tell where the ball is before it reaches the catcher?

        Obscure rules because the umpires are incompetent doesn't improve the game.

        • If that could be done, the player would hit the ball every time. There's a reason we throw curve balls and sliders and breaking balls and all kinds of other terminology. You can look at a fast ball and predict its path. You might not hit it though, because its too fast! But if you do hit it, there's a good chance of a home run. Other pitches are, well, slower and rely on having an unpredictable path. If the player can't tell where the ball is going and the catcher can't tell either, how is the umpire

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Cederic ( 9623 )

            The umpire doesn't need to know where the ball is going. He just watches where it goes.

            If he can't see, he should move so that he can.

            • He does. And if the catcher moves in such a way as to block his vision, he moves again. But if he can't move fast enough and the ball crosses the plate, he has difficulty making the call. That's back to my original point. I think you vastly underestimate the skill needed all around in baseball. That might be part of why you don't enjoy it. When baseball is played at a high level, games are won and lost on minute details. One of those details is that the catcher "frames" the pitch by having his glove

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Cederic ( 9623 )

                You're not describing skill. You're describing a game mechanic intended to compensate for the umpire standing in a stupid place.

                Where he can't see what's happening.

                But no, you're right, I don't like baseball. It's a shitty game played by drug addled clowns managed by corrupt cheaters that work for malignant organisations.

                • Many people don't like baseball. But it still requires a lot of skill. There's no way to see if the ball went over the plate unless you are standing behind the plate. That's why the umpire stands there. Otherwise they would be happy to stand somewhere else with less risk of getting hit by a passed pitch! As mentioned in TFS, at some point, balls and strikes may get called by an algorithm making the game more consistent and resulting in less umpires getting hit with pitches. That would change how the pit

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Cederic ( 9623 )

                    I can only recommend you give cricket a try. Start with T20, either the IPL or internationals. It's an abbreviated form of the game with the rules intentionally skewed to favour the batsmen.

                    The cricket connoisseur prefers Test cricket but five day matches would be a difficult place to start; the drama is in the individual battles, the shifts in momentum and the nuance of how each team and individual approaches the game.

    • I have no horse in this race anymore, I played a lot as a kid but never watched religiously. Why not do away with the catcher signals altogether? "But then it's harder to catch when they throw so fast." And so? You mean just like it was a century ago (speaking of tradition)? That sounds correct to me, even if they have to slow down...hence the balanced skills part.

      A bonus: If they're so worried about game being so long, this would probably shave 25% off of each game.

  • Remember the face-ruining Jawbone Bluetooth device of the early 2000s... bone conductive sound is not a safe technology.

  • buttons (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:39AM (#61621187)

    If the buttons are labeled and always in the same place then you can just read the fingers, same as before. It was never the transmission that was the problem, the problem is that the signal is obvious before transmission. This solution does not solve the problem. I'm surprised they didn't put a blockchain in it too.

  • "begin testing an encrypted wireless communication device that replaces the traditional flash of fingers with button taps, according to ESPN.'

    Yeah, I recall seeing this on the local news as one of their fluff stories *in the 1980s*. Little sender with buttons the catcher used to specify the throw and location, tiny lights on the cap brim and or buzzer in the glove for the pitcher.

    They tried it. Teams said you couldn't make all the calls and too annoying to use. Not sure why adding encryption will change tha

  • Hacking the system is virtually impossible.

    - Microsoft 1995

  • This thing will very likely have amateur-level security or none at all.

  • Removing the human element is a mistake. Whether it is enhancing the refereeing with video replay review or automatic line judges or now boosting team communication security with tech. For everything it adds in "fairness" it takes away tenfold in relatability and the human experience. The teams should devise their own encryption method for the hand signals if they want it - maybe the signals mean something different depending on whether there have been previous balls or strikes, whatever - just keep it huma

  • The catcher could signal the pitcher and first baseman (or 2nd base pair) of when to do a pickup such that pitcher doesn't look and starts throwing movement before baseman moves to the base. Could get some really interesting pickoff choreography!

  • Time to replace baseball players with robots.

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