StepN, the popular Move-to-Earn of the moment, has been confronted with numerous DDOS attacks this weekend, causing instability and subsequent downtime of the application’s servers. At the time of writing, the technical team is still working on a solution to solve the problem and prevent future attacks.
StepN is undergoing numerous DDOS attacks
The Move-to-Earn StepN, which has been a success for a few months now although still officially in beta, has suffered 2 rounds of heavy DDOS attacks this weekend, to the point of crashing its servers.
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We have been under multiple DDOS attacks in the past hours. Securing the servers and recovery may take anywhere from 1 to 12 hours. We recommend you take some rest during the maintenance or otherwise the work-outs may not be recorded properly.– STEPN | Public Beta Phase IV (@Stepnofficial) June 5, 2022
We have suffered multiple DDOS attacks in the last few hours. Securing the servers and recovery may take between 1 and 12 hours. We recommend that you rest during maintenance, otherwise workouts may not be recorded correctly. “
A DDOS attack, also known as a denial of service attack, is the flooding of servers with requests, sometimes to the point of making them unusable.
According to StepN, the servers were confronted with 25 million simultaneous DDOS attacks on Saturday 4 June, causing disconnections among users who were wrongly identified as bots.
In parallel to these attacks, technical teams have implemented a new update to stop some users from cheating by using bots to win tokens
Second major attack the next day
To compensate its users, StepN set up a special reward programme that was to take place on Sunday 5 June, during which time those affected should have enjoyed double the maximum energy (needed to enjoy in-app rewards).
However, the servers were attacked at the same time, bringing them down. Many users were unable to take advantage of the momentary energy bonus, and were quick to express their displeasure on Twitter.
Are you going to compensate for the lost GST during this attack? I couldn’t claim my reward and had to reopen the app – then all was gone. Also, what about event, will there be another?
– Patricia Petruta (@PetrutaPatricia) June 5, 2022
It seems that the problem is still being solved by StepN’s maintenance teams, as no official statement informing of the return to normal has been issued at the time of writing.
As a result of these shocks, StepN’s governance token, GMT, briefly fell to $0.91, the lowest of the week. It then recovered, with a current price of $1.05.
This is not a first for StepN, which faces the determination of hackers on a near-constant basis, who put the game’s servers to the test every month.
