Re: Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN

[Scott Gifford <sgifford () tir com>]

"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.