A bad day all round on the computer security front at the TechZi HQ. I found and deleted a trojan horse that had been sitting on my system (thankfully unactivated, for I hadn’t opened the EXE despite the fact it had been sitting on my DESKTOP of all places for several months) and TechZi got… Well. Messed up. Anyone who noticed that the site and RSS feed were down, their e-mails to me were bouncing and that anything remotely TechZi-related at all was showing errors might be interested to know that Nate’s hosting got in a tizzy, after someone or something managed to create 30-GIGABYTES of error data, overloading the server’s hard-drive and causing the whole network to fall on it’s knees.

I’m curious as to what could have caused it and want your views. Maybe a brute force attempt to gain access to one of the sites that Nate hosts? Maybe a bot over-excessively trying to find a non-existant file, getting itself stuck in a loop, and being determined to find it - logging up hundreds of millions of errors? Who the heck knows - any security experts step forward.

On a slightly more cheery note, Apple’s latest OS X, Leopard - is scheduled for release on October 26th, something I (for once) picked up on before any of the major blogs, more by chance than anything. I’d been thinking of getting a MacBook for a while to help speed up the Affiliate Defined development, but knowing Leopard was just around the corner, I’d held on. This morning at school I quickly log on to check my e-mail, wander over to the Apple site to show Luke what the heck a MacBook is (only to find him not remotely interested) and notice Apple tooting it’s own horn over Leopard. Engadget and Gizmodo were still fast asleep. Pity about having to rush of to Maths though, else I would ‘ave blogged it.

Anyhow - October 26th. If no rumors pop up in the meantime or in the week or so following the release, I think it’s safe to say I’ll be grabbing a MacBook within the next few weeks. Unless of course Apple runs an after-Christmas sale, something I’m not sure about. If anyone has any scoops, tips or blatently obvious information I’ve somehow managed to miss, send your junk to Stupid-Editor@TechZi.net - Thanks guys! pics via Engadget