Not necessarily breakage, but I would assume it's a problem (or feature) in someone's regular expression matching patterns, since it looks for any entry that contains the specified string if it doesn't end in '.anything', in other words, "it's the result of a 'loose grep'". And if you're using anything automated based off of results from whois.internic.net, then you should be checking for multiple entries, i.e. domains that use their domain name as a nameserver resulting in 2 entries, (example: netsys.com), if you're heavily affected by this, then it's time to take a closer look at your code. Joshua Goodall wrote:

$ whois -h whois.internic.net microsoft.com

Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.

MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SECRETLY.RUN.BY.ILLUMINATI.TERRORISTS.NET MICROSOFT.COM

Enough said. Similar for apple.com. The web-based whois client at nsiregistry.com is giving correct results, as are the gtld-servers, as does -h networksolutions.com

FreeBSD and at least one release of Linux I've tested query whois.internic.net by default. If anyone is using automated whois in production (very likely), check your results!

J

-- Virtual Development Incorporated http://www.vdi.net Omachonu Ogali missnglnk@vdi.net Network Engineer (973) 815-2799