Steemauto was down
Yesterday I got informed on the discord channel of #alldutch that Steemauto didn't work anymore. Autovotes weren't put out on the fanbase and curationtrail accounts. I didn't noticed it before but when looking at my last post I did see that none of the accounts from @smg and @qurator visited my post. So I looked a bit more into it and indeed Steemauto was down.
It turned out that the Steemauto servers where attacked with a DDOS attack (Denial of Service). A DDOS attack sends so many traffic to one particular website that the server(s) can't manage it anymore and willgo down with the loss of the service they provide at that moment.
The result for steemit is that all the people who had configured autovotes on accounts they follow or curation trails they are following didn't vote at all on those accounts.
I look it from the possitive site, my votingpower had some time to recover lol...
I can't see at this moment what the status of Steemauto is at this moment, we will see after posting this post I guess :)
Security and Vulnerability
Source
A DDOS attack like the one on Steemauto isn't new or rare. It happens a lot. For instance in Holland in the beginning of this year thaere was major attack on Dutch banks . The result of those attacks are that transactions for the bank (online) where impossible to do. So it can be a real threat for payment transactions.
globally you have two reasons why people are doing these kind of attacks
For fun
Scriptkiddies are wondering if they could get a particular site down woth a DDOS attack. Often they even didn't programmed the tools they are using but bought them on the internet or (which is real) the ordered a 'DDOS as a service".. Which means they pay a third party to perform the DDOS attack. Often those kind of services are paid using crypto for tracebility.To do an organisation (or even country) harm
You often see that when a company makes a statement in public or is doing business that a lot of people dislike (from political or moral perspecticve) more and more cybercrime is used to try and stop those companies with their actions. And this is the same for countries. Every Dutch member will remember when hackers tried to shut down the Port of Rotterdam, one of the arteries of the Dutch economy.
When we reflect that to the Steemblockchain and projects running on it I do think a lot of services are vulnerable to these kind of motivs and attacks.... For instance, how will Facebook or it's following react when Steemit will pass them in popularity? I can imagine actions will be taken to try to harm steemit in any way possible, and the most effective would be shutting the sites down.. Of course I hope this won't get real (the hack part, Steemit may be bigger if it was up to me ;) ) but these are real scenario's to be dealt with.
I think in the near future, when the Steemit blockchain wil gain more and more popularity, these attacks will be grow. So it is a good thing if developers of projects on the blockchain will take Security as a important aspect of their project.
I must say that most, for now, are doing very well and that there haven't been any major issues, so I'm confident for the future :)
Fresh blood on Steemit
My good friend @steevc mentioned it already in some of his posts but the number of Steemit visitors and users are fluctuate. A little while back the number of hits on the website where higher then they are the last couple of weeks. I peronally think it's inherent to the low steem price (which I can't understand cause as long as you don't trade and are here for the long run it has no effect on your personal steem amount.)
I do think we need more active users, not the fake or bully accounts that appeared last week, to let the platform grow and become more mature. With more mature I mean more as a 'commodity platform and know to all'.. I have been thinking a lot on how to promote Steemit in the 'Big bad world ;)' But when I look at my inner circle people are still sceptical, even when I show them my blog, comments, rewards and stuff... Sometimes I do think they don't want to invest the time because on Facebook it is okay to just post a photo with the meal you had last night with a message "The soup was delicious again" And I don't think Steemit is the place for those posts ;)...
Im really interested in good ideas to promote Steemit in the big bas world, so any ideas or initatives ? Please leave them in the comments so we can discuss about them and perhaps form a "Steemit promotional team " :) That would be cool....
Have a great day
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