Wordpress Comment Spam, Anyone?

For those of you wondering where I’ve been, it’s Malaysia and Indonesia for the past two months (stories and photos). Not that anyone wants to hear about that, though!

Has anybody noticed a remarkable spike in wordpress comment spam in the last week? I’ve had to defer all comments for moderation due to the massive amounts of crap that’s coming through. More importantly, does anybody have any suggestion of a way to get around it?

Update: Just noticed that all my permanent pages and comment captcha is missing. This disturbs me greatly.