@nijeah - Who broke the blockchain ?

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

2018-06-26 00:44:45

The @nijeah account started the first power down process of -1 VESTS.

2018-06-26 00:47:06

After the start of the power down process of first -2 VESTS and then -10,000,000,000 VESTS, the power down reaches its maximum of -1,000,000,000,000 VESTS, which is currently about -492,666,183,591 STEEM Power.

2018-07-03 00:47:00

The first payout of the Power Down process breaks the blockchain because it was a negative amount which was powered down so the blockchain didn't know how to handle it. There were any blocks produced at this point.

So far the problem has been solved and everything is running smoothly again. Witness Nodes updated to version 0.19.5, which solves the problem.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.19.5


This is a brief description of what happened. You can read more posts on this topic by @jerc33, @bobinson, @holger80, @ironshield and even @steemitblog.
But there was an interesting point @isnochys' that caught my attention. It draws a connection between @netuoso and @nijeah. Both sent SBD to the same bittrex address.

So the question is, who is this guy, @nijeah?
[…]
This points to @netuoso

His answer says that he is not involved in this issue but his support for the user may have helped him to do this:

I do not own or run the @nijeah account. Several months back I helped the user with a couple scripts and answered a few questions on discord. I was compensated for my time.
[…]
They did contain automated vesting withdrawals so could be related.

So one question remains: Who is @nijeah ?

The history of @nijeah


The account was created by @anonsteem on 2017-12-27 23:07:12. Since there is no STEEM transaction, it was created either with payment in LTC or in BTC. I don't see any possibility to get further information about the account holder here.

After creation, the account plagiarized @haejin's contributions and was caught five times by Steemcleaners.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Since January 8, 2018, the account was inactive until it began to power down a negative amount.

The relation between @nijeah and @netuoso


As mentioned above they both transferred SBD to the same bittrex address. @netuoso's answer seems reasonable, but the question why @nijeah didn't send SBD directly makes it suspicious.

So I dug into @nijeah to find any evidence that keeps the account. Pretty quickly I went over to do some research on the accounts @nijeah delegates to. These accounts are @grumpydog and @wewt.

@grumpydog is not very interesting. It was created by @nijeah and just upvoted @nijeah. So there is @wewt left.

@wewt - Another track pointing to @netuoso


@wewt was created by @msp3k [1] and @msp3k was created by @netuoso [2]. Both accounts set @netuoso as proxy [3] , [4].
There are already two connections between @netuoso and @wewt, the creator and the witness voting.
Also the upvoting scheme shows a clear picture:

AuthorNumber of Upvotes by @wewt
@netuoso28
@suheri7
@chron3
@yandot2
@emrebeyler2
@reko2
26 more authors29

Around 38.5% of all Upvotes went to @netuoso.

The last connection I found between @wewt and @netuoso was that @wewt set @netuoso as withdraw vesting route [5]. This means that when @wewt powers down VESTS, they automatically end up in the @netuoso account. You won't need to set this for every power down process manually.

When I completed all the research on @wewt, I have some pretty hard evidence that this account belongs to @netuoso. And the account, most likely operated by @netuoso, has a delegation from @nijeah that broke the blockchain yesterday.


I contacted @netuoso on Discord and asked him a few questions but I didn't get an answer yet. As soon as I get an answer I will edit it into this post afterwards. Or maybe he wants to make a statement in the comments? I would also appreciate this way.

To make it clear. I don't want accuse @netuoso of crashing the blockchain but there are interesting relations between the two accounts which I investigated here. To put it into the words of @isnochys:

We don't have a smoking gun here, but at least a gun with maybe fingerprints on it.

@netuoso wrote an open letter in which he denies any owner ship of @nijeah.
https://steemit.com/drama/@netuoso/open-letter-to-the-harassers-and-anyone-else-paying-attention-re-blockchain-freeze


Image source: https://pixabay.com/de/hacker-cyber-kriminalit%C3%A4t-internet-2300772/

PS: On all 61 open Discord Server related to Steemit I joined, there is nowhere an account named @nijeah. But @netuoso got in contact with him on Discord…

Sort:  

As Promise, I will Jump in for visibility .

On all 61 open Discord Server related to Steemit I joined...

So what Discord servers netuoso joined? Was it a DM instead of a Steemit-related server?

Great work as always... you're a rockstar steemithound

I am not on all Discord Server which are related to Steemit so it can mean nothing.
But you'd need to share a Discord Server with someone if you want to find him with the search. Otherwise you need the tag by the user.
Your Discord name is build like this:

yourname#1234

And you need the numbers if you want to find someone who doesn't share a Discord server with you.

Funny side fact: the bitcoin address published by @nijaeh is the same as contained in a post from the haejin account on Golos: https://golos.io/dentacoin/@haejin/dentacoin-dcn-could-be-a-ground-floor-opportunity-target-usd0-0165-46x-profit-potential-1515564604874

Well, he just copied everything :D
Another fun fact: The BTC, LTC and ETH address are also used in a @heajin parody of @netuoso:
https://steemit.com/steem/@netuoso/technical-analysis-proves-that-steem-will-either-go-up-or-down-click-here-to-see-more-charts-provided-free

Thanks for mentioning me in the post! Yesterday was a day of INFAMY! @ironshield

You're welcome. The blockchain reacted well and that is the only good thing about it.

I'm glad that people are so diligent to explain what happened and fix it within a reasonable time. @ironshield

Thanks for the thorough research. This is the type of stuff I love about this blockchain and the internet in general.

Thanks a lot. I also like the blockchain for its transparency which allows to find out quite a lot.

I agree. The info is out there and it's on us to find it. That's why it's good to have people like you who are willing to do the research.

Fun fact: @nijeah is @haejin spelled backwards.

I wanted to comment the same thing, but you preceded me and luckily I read your comment prior to commenting.
In addition to its connections to netuoso and plagiarizing from haejin, haejin currently votes for netuoso as a witness (2018-7-4) and I remember that he wrote that netuoso was good for him but was not specific about what did netuoso did for him.
I remember vaguely and might be wrong about it, that initially netuoso did not fancy haejin.
I also remember this:
https://steemit.com/steem/@biophil/how-are-the-witnesses-performing-let-s-look-at-some-statistics
Another matter for thought is netuoso's masonic gesture in his avatar.

What do haejin or netuoso had to gain from a downtime?
Maybe someone wanted to crash Steem's or SBD's price at a certain time.
Maybe someone wanted to recuperate his "VP".
Maybe hurt some or all of Steem renters (those paying for Steem delegations).
Maybe something else.
Maybe a combination of some or all of the above with something else.

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Maybe someone wanted to recuperate his "VP"

Would VP actually recover when the blockchain is at a halt?

Good question.
IDNK, but in this case I noticed that my voting quota reached 100% and stayed there while the blockchain was down.
How did I see it?

  1. It was below 97% before the crash, and 100% after it.
  2. There were brief moments when steemd.com showed voting quota during the downtime and it showed its increase until it got to 100%

It may be time dependent only.

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I left it away because it is pretty obvious and mentioned anywhere else.

I'm just afraid this is gonna start another firestorm on Steemit.

The question would be: Against whom ?
In this post I just show a suspicious connection but there could be an easy and reasonable explanation for it. As long as there is no proof about the account holder of @nijeah everything is speculation.

honestly, this was a bug that never should have been there from the very start.
@nijeah made it obvious and visible and made steemit inc produce a fix directly, ok for me case solved.
All this mystery mumbo jumbo is something i wont take part in, because it seriously does not matter who exactly that account belongs to.
just my 2 cent
Jedi

It was a malicious attack. If it would just be about pointing out the bug the user could have used a testnet. And there is normally a general interest who is behind such actions.

@naturicia maybe you have watched too many James Bond movies. Malicious attack ... well if that is what you call malicious...🙏

This is amazing! Fantastic research you did here. I'm specially glad to see that you checked the delegators, specifically @wewt.
Thank you. ;)

The delegators are the an obvious thing about the account. And they are something what may not stay a secret. ^^

nein nein sowas darf man nicht ansprechen

wenn mein geld auf dem tisch liegt, will ich auch wissen was abgeht...obs auf diesem wege was bringt

@naturicia you were flagged by a worthless gang of trolls, so, I gave you an upvote to counteract it! Enjoy!!

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