In my experience, Panix is run by really competent and dedicated people; I wouldn't be surprised if they dream in Unix. So if this hijacking can happen to them, something is deeply screwed up in the way domain names registration is run.
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Exactly right and this incident is waking more of the technorati up to the deep, structural snafus of the domain naming system which have only recently come to my attention (I think we all sort of knew anyway but hoped for the best).
I smelled something foul in the air yesterday when things went dark from lbotalk - a lookup produced bizarre results and of course, emails were bounced.
The thieves (probably not the folks listed in the altered whois record which is no doubt a mis-direct - unless they've very, very stupid) have surely picked the wrong people to mess with. The collective, unfriendly attention of more than a few of Panix's quite savvy customers will eventually be turned in their direction.
Possibly the only worse move, from an enjoying the spoils of your ill gotten gain perspective, would be hijacking 2600 or Cryptome.
.d.