Hive-Engine Transaction Spam Attack - Who Was Responsible?

I understand that the Hive side chain Hive-Engine has experienced an outrageous and wholly unjustified assault designed to significantly disrupt its normal function. I have to say the attackers have been somewhat clever to use the transaction process to carry out their attack. An account under the name of @shaggroed was created and then 300,000 transactions were processed through the platform in the space of half an hour. This resulted in block processing time considerably increasing to the point where significant disruption has been caused to the platform.

I do not know all the ins and outs of this issue and even though I am not the owner of Hive-Engine I feel a personal sense of disgust. What I mean by that is the attack wasn't just on Hive-Engine or @aggroed, it felt like it was personal to me also as I am a solid Hivian who wants the best for this platform. The transaction spam attack was an attack on all Hivians and we should all feel a collective sense of anger at what has happened.

It really irks me to see that people are prepared to waste their time and efforts into disrupting the natural flow of the blockchain, why don't those people invest their time and effort into something far more productive? Why can't they use their energies on creating something of benefit and reward instead of enacting destruction?

I have no idea the rationale behind the attack and why this person or these people had Hive-Engine in their target sights, I assume there must be a reason. Has @aggroed annoyed someone? Has he made enemies? Perhaps so, but a lot of us have enemies - some might be justified others not so justified. But to go to these lengths is quite mendacious and spiteful. Does anyone know exactly why the attacked happened?

However, the great thing about people and the witnesses on this chain is that they bounce back and they do so quickly. I know that @aggroed has been doing his best to resolve the problems with Hive-Engine and he has an effective team of determined devs trying to sort this. He has been updating the community on a regular basis too, which in times of turmoil clear communications from the top are so very important. So I actually commend his response and efforts to the attack.

The great thing about this chain is that there isn't just one great thing about it, there are so many positives to Hive. But when faced with adversity it is so encouraging to see people fight back and restore the order of the chain. The resilience that I have seen from @aggroed and others to sort this problem is the type of safeguarding that is required.

Right now Hive-Engine has some functionality restored it seems but its still limited.

As you can see from the on screen message block production still has some way to go before it can fully catch up and the chain is in full process mode again. But at least transactions are not completely stalled so if you put a transaction through it will take a while for it to completely process, but it will process eventually. It's also good to know that if you did process a transaction before or during the attack while there was a temporary halt your transaction has not been lost and will eventually process.

The Hive-Engine dev team are also going to be introducing new anti-spam measures and other safety precautions to ensure this type of attack can not happen again. So hopefully HE will now be more secure than ever.

I still really want to know if anyone knows who did this? I don't know if that information is public but if anyone does know please do let us know, blimey there's a lot of knows in this sentence! The attack does not seem like it was a hack as no financial advantage has been gained, the objective seems to have been pure disruption and nothing else.

Okay it would be remiss of me not to give one credit to the attacker/s, yup they do deserve acknowledgement for one thing - the name @SHAGGROED! That's frickin hilarious!! Sorry @aggroed dude!