Transaction / spam flood attack currently under way

Someone is apparently “testing” the main bitcoin network by flooding it with 0.01 BTC transactions from A->A and B->B, where A and B are two random public keys. You can watch at http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe

We’ve hit the free transaction limit on each block, for many blocks now — appears to be ~219 free transactions per block. “real” transactions do not appear DoS’d at this time, presumably due to logic that prioritizes, in part, based on transaction value.

Free TX's are just asking for permanent level of spam. There should be a cost to each TX, even if it's only 0.001 BTC or so.