SoapBlox Hacked: How It Affects The Movement

by: Matt Glazer

Wed Jan 07, 2009 at 10:42 AM CST

Last night SoapBlox was hacked. It is the most important piece of the national netroots interface many of you have never heard of.

Our site, along with nearly 100 others, are run on the SoapBlox platform. That is hundreds of thousands of eyes across the nation who use SoapBlox and never knew it.

What we know right now is that MN Progressive Project, Swing State Project, BlueJersey, Pam's House Blend, and many other sites are down and could be knocked out by this hack.

We know Paul, SoapBlox's creator, is not optimistic and posted this recently:

It was a good ride, but it's over.
Thanks for all the fish.
All these hackers messing with our stuff, and we here at SoapBlox have no clue what to do. We don't have enough knowledge, time, money, or care to fix it.
So I hope the Hackers are happy.
If you want the data from your blog, we will get it. But we are not going to try and restore anything.
Consider this the "We're Out of Business" post.
Most of the servers have been taken off line because they were being used to hack and exploit other websites. The hackers install this crap on servers after they get in. SoapBlox's ISP then takes the servers off line.
We do not know when they will come back online.
We do not know if they will come back online.

Again, Burnt Orange Report and our data seem to be in working order and intact. But if SoapBlox is down and fails to return, nearly 90% of the statewide blog infrastructure must reorganize. Nationally that means state and local sites are no longer able to cover their state legislative sessions or city, state, or statewide races.

In the long run, this outage (temporary or permanent) directly hurts all of us.

Paul developed and maintained SoapBlox for little money and no fame. In fact, SoapBlox is just a part time job for Paul, and like many of us that do this, we are required to have paid full time jobs in order to maintain and run our online projects. Today highlight why this systemic problem must be fixed long term.

We will keep you updated on what is going on. Over the coming hours or days, we may be asking for your help in saving the 50 state blogosphere.

For more information please visit this DailyKos thread.

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SoapBlox Hacked: How It Affects The Movement | 3 comments

Netroots is Not Black Hat or even Comdex (2.00 / 2)

Netroots Nation is a really neat convention. I am already signed up for Pittsburg.

That said, the one in Austin (my first) was full of nerds (and spooks, and actual politicians) but devoid of geeks, well, except for Debra Bowen.

For what it is worth, I think there needs to be some serious thought at the netroots about the technical infrastructure we use.

It is fragile and has serious technical deficiencies more fundamental than just the the essentially legal threats than Lessig describes.

I am astonished that the TPA and EFF have no interaction that I am aware of and that the "Voter ID" controversy has lead nobody to the "Seven Laws of Identity".

I guess it is soporific effects of the Apple monopoly in Austin.

::JRBehrman

by: JRBehrman @ Wed Jan 07, 2009 at 15:36:18 PM CST

interesting... (0.00 / 0)

are all the soapblox sites hosted by this same guy? It should be easy enough for folks to install the software on a vps account and get back online. Of course, the developer looks like he's pretty burnt out with the whole mess so people might want to start looking at migrating to another platform.

by: Kedron Touvell @ Wed Jan 07, 2009 at 16:07:42 PM CST

A real setback to the netroots (0.00 / 0)

One of the other sites that I frequent Demconwatch had just recently migrated to Soapbox.

While we all appreciate the information provided by the folks running these netroots site, Soapbox gave the regular visitors the ability to do our own posts which had the effect of expanding the sources of information exponentially (as well as adding a broader range of expertise and perspectives on the issues).

Hopefully, all of the sites which relied on Soapbox will be able to find an equivalent hosting service soon. The value of this type of alternative media and networking for activists can't be understated.

by: tmess2 @ Wed Jan 07, 2009 at 18:05:43 PM CST