"Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve@opaltelecom.co.uk> writes:

Out of interest.. does anyone happen to know why rs.internic.net reports the following of microsoft.com?

[rs.internic.net] [ ... ] MICROSOFT.COM.HACKED.BY.HACKSWARE.COM [ etc... ]

That's a fairly recent trick (which has been discussed here before); the default Whois search is a substring search. Since anybody with a domain can register their DNS servers with any registrar, the smartass owner of 'hacksware.com' just named their nameserver: MICROSOFT.COM.HACKED.BY.HACKSWARE.COM which is a legitate name for a nameserver, and contains the substring microsoft.com. You can work around it by only searching domains (not nameservers): whois 'domain microsoft.com' Either funny or disturbing, depending on how you look at it. Perhaps both . . . -----ScottG.