Some miscreant is currently making a concerted attempt at spamming The Cat. His 'bot net doesn't seem too big (maybe 20 odd machines?). The thing is, each machine blats about 5 spams at Coofer Cat, then does nothing for ages before having another go. All in all, The Cat's taking quite a pounding from this spam (which I'd put down to a single spammer, given the style of the attack).
Thankfully, the excellent Spam Module for Drupal is doing a fantastic job of keeping the spam off the site, and The Cat is fit enough to handle the (much, much) higher traffic.
It just makes me wonder if this bottom-feeder is actually getting anything from someone for supposedly raising the search profile of these various drugs and gambling pages. The thing that grates with all this, is (a) it's not working, and (b) even if it was, having hundreds and hundreds of links from each page is counter-productive: all the major search engines defend against that sort of thing. If someone is paying for this, they're not even getting a vaguely good service!
Update 17th Feb: Spoke too soon, the system's load average went sky high, but a few restarts sorted it out. Still not much getting through the spam filter though ;-)