Steemauto, Fresh blood on Steemit & Security and vulnerability :)
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
They are the creators of Steemify, THE notification app for your Steemit account for IOS.
Yeah thanks for the on the pulse report Peter, also I love your energy and intentions for the platform. I feel your energy and it is uplifting. Especially for some of us old guard who have been plugging away for a long time. Seen the highs and lows, the amazing potential and the asshole dramas. What most we have all noticed that Stinc is definitely playing a strategic and patient game.. we all wait with baited breath for the SMT roll out and next HF.
Meanwhile, often our efforts to invite our circle of friends and family have long since chosen their positions.. the biggest influencer/motivator for people will be the STEEM value.. even the reports of people living full time from blogging on steemit was not enough for many since they don't believe it is possible for them and as they do not bother to study the tech and only listen to mainstream ideas I get it, they don't care because they are too lazy to understand.
So for me I feel we are waiting the right cocktail of steem price, simpler user experience and more diversity in content.. personally I feel we are slowly growing towards that too. It certainly feels more like a marathon than a sprint though. I'm enjoying the slow burn as best I can brother.
Thanks for inspiring me to think about and reasses where I am. I am hopeful for things like @steemshop to be an example of real transactions and trading inherent in our system. As well as oracle-d to attrct more investment money and projects for content creators to get behind. Both those I feel are huge movers and give us a boost in the right direction.
How about you, what have you seen or found out there in the wide ocean that gives you hope and inspiration?
Cheers bro.
Thank you very much... I apreciated it very much. I love being here and being part of SMG to make this thing work :)..
There are many projects that gives me inspiration just because people are busy with some good stuff... Like @steemshop , I looked at the discord channel and I do think this has potential... The projects like Steemhunt and communities like @sma are awesome... But to be honest the future-proof projects are still rare... We tend to go with hypes, but nevertheless we all are inspired by this great platform !!! And we will continue to be and do so :)
Take care my friend !!
It would be great if Steemit Inc.. spent a little on promotion. The facebook crew wont move as they are then commenting on 'strangers' material and not their friends down the street. Even the lure of $$ doesnt seem to work.
SteemAuto I think is back, I missed a load of votes yesterday too. What I do to check now is use SteemWorld and check the@helpie account. If its voting then SteemAuto is working.
The site indeed is still in beta but don't let that be a showstopper for @steemit to promote a bit more ;)
SteemAuto is still not working, this is a manual up-vote. The funny thing is this account is up voting some posts and not others. I will need to keep doing some manuals until its fully working again.
I've noticed it in my voting also... just a few :)
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I do everything manually😬 I think its rude to not give a comments back to people and not only to My own followers. Wasnt that the thing to do here. And sometimes I get really I mean really frustrated that a shitt post gets alot more than the ones I think I Made and are great BUT hee I am In this for me, for Fun and I Will See Where this wave Will bring me! And Our interaction is Nice, I am not the best promoter yet, I think I want to meet a few follow steemies in real life first but My kids want an account too so Thats Whats the next step on this front !
Great plan to meet up with a lot of Steemians at "the euromast" for example :)
But you are right about voting, I only use autovote for my curationtrails.
I work in a school and always think I should corrupt the kids there, but am worried their parents would have something to say about it - I usually only tell the smart geeks, which gives me kudos too. Is steemauto up and running again? Perhaps not, given our vote counts. Strange days. I am getting a bit frustrated with the lack of quality content here - the most frustrating one is one I see on a curation trail that gets lots of upvotes and all he does is post memes and doesn't even credit them! Makes me wonder why I waste my time. Then, it's fun writing and connecting with the nice crew, you included.
Well thank you, of course it's mutual :) Yes sometimes you do wonder what we are doing wrong if you see some rewards for shitty posts :)....
My son is going to give a presentation at his school about Steem and Steemit, so perhaps there will be an invasion of youngsters soon :)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
Lol, us adults are so good at brainwashing youth..
lol, it was all his own... He saw my posts and some rewards he thougt "We'll that's great pocket money' lol..
Smart kid. My two nephews busk down the local supermarket and earn a fortune!
Very interesting post..
I know I don't do as good a job as I could at promoting Steemit. I think part of that though is due to the barriers to join. If they could make it easier to join with less of a waiting period, it might be easier to get people on. If I am talking to a person that isn't super tech savvy, but they have something to contribute it is hard to say "hey you should join this... but you have to wait for them to email you back and it could take a while" and "Then you can only post probably once a day because your bandwidth will be so low". Things like that make it tough.
thats the frustrating thing indeed, you want to be handson and say lets do the introduction post together, because you will be accepted within let say 30 minutes and i am still here to help. The enthousiasme is there and you want them to be as excited as you are about steemit but thats not possible, and thats one off the things why i dont recrute ( yet ) i am getting the kids involved like for example pappa-pepper.
but thinking about a solution.
Good points. It is hard for sure. My friends daughter is big into writing and photography, I thought she would bite hard on the idea of Steemit, but she didn't.
Heard of Steemauto but I rather vote manually because it feels more fair. And I rather upvote good posts and not only the one from whom I follow. But I can understand it will eventually take too much time and not wanting to let the vote unused.
I also feel like the activity got less on Steemit and also some artists I follow got inactive while they were doing so much better than me. When I talk about Steemit to people in real life (knowing they could be successful with their talents) they kind of not absorb the info or do anything with it. It's like they don't care. I can't explain everything as I'm a noob but still...I stopped doing it for now and just think it's their loss....I mean I'm not going to force them ;)