Where did the ZDNet UK blogs go? An explanation

You may have noticed some odd behaviour in the ZDNet UK blogging system last night and today. In fact, you'd have been hard pressed not to: it hasn't been working.

There'll be more details later, once the dust has died down, but the short story is that we came under a very large and sophisticated spam attack at around 7pm yesterday evening, UK time. This resulted in some ugly content appearing - and, much as we like to promote diversity and the enjoyment of technology, it wasn't really what ZDNet UK wants to be known for.

To stop the attack, we had to turn off the blogging system, then clean up the mess. We then had to create and test some new software that will stop the problem happening again - that's the stage we're at the moment - and, all being well, we'll be able to open up the system again properly tomorrow.

At the moment, only ZDNet UK staff can post blogs - so apologies to everyone who's wondering where their posts have gone. That restriction will come off shortly. We should be able to resurrect any posts that were made today... but no promises.

Also, nobody can register - again, a new registration process is being tested and will be in place and live tonight or tomorrow.

Our tech and ops teams in the UK and elsewhere have been working their fingers off since the attack to get things back on song - unsung heroes, all.

One of the costs of running a system like ours, where anyone can join up and leave content, is that we have to fight spam all the time. We've already got a lot of systems in place to help us, and we spend a lot of time keeping the stuff out. The spammers, who are well funded, very technical and operate 24/7, spend a lot of time trying to get past us.

Usually, we prevail. Not this time.

So once again, apologies for the disruption. Thanks for your patience. (Unless you've lost patience and aren't reading this.)

Normal service will be restored, as soon as possible.