Currently the steemimg appears to be under a DDOS attack. Unless the site popularity has increased 100 fold in the past 24 hours... I believe I can rule this out. I am working with the server provider to try and get this resolved as quickly as possible. I was hoping to resolve this quickly as to avoid doing a post about it but it seems it it more serious then I had thought. Be assured all images hosted on the site are safe but I have suspended new image uploading and have moved the website into maintenance mode. Steemit.com caches all of its posts images via img.steemit.com so many of you may not have even noticed that your images are no longer loading. Any new visitor to your posts will see the (image not found - spaceship) I am deeply sorry for this. If you have a live post using images hosted on steemimg I may suggest hosting them elsewhere and editing your post image urls. Some may still being seeing their images at times due to my efforts to restore functionally but I may still suggest to move them.
Trust me, I am working hard to get this resolved as quickly as I can. I understand that these things happen, especially to sites that see a sharp increase in popularity and use. It also may have been appealing for such an attack based on the fact that it would effect a lot of posts here on steemit and actually have an impact. Since the site was launched we have had over 90,000 images uploaded and growing fast. Server limitations was always a factor in potential growth of steemimg but as I said we didn't hit these limitations yet. Sadly, this may be the end for new image uploads on steemimg, If these attacks start to become a regular thing I don't want the community to suffer for it, I just simply don't have the resources to combat this type of attack.
As for images currently hosted on the site, once the site is restored to full working order, I already have paid in advance 10 years of server costs at the current limitations (thanks to profit from the first post). This means you un-editable post images will safe for a long time!
I will keep everyone updated via this post, I hope that by the time you read this I will have resolved the issue and stopped the attack.
Blue
Update
Just doubled up on the resources to see the severity of the attack and the limit was hit and exceeded once again...
Update 11:06 AM EST
Just finished up a second round of major server shifting , images should be loading on posts... I don't think I am out off the water just yet but if you can see or not see the website please comment below and let me know! - Lets see how long this lasts for...
Update 11:09 Am EST
Spoke too soon. When I have it stable and up for at least 10 minutes then I announce something :/
Update 3:09 PM EST
The site is officially back up. All hosted images will work without issue.
I am going to keep the no upload restriction up until further notice.
Thanks for your patience!