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).. d.
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This was my thought. That the dns registries had been compromised. Not that somebody bureaucratically went through the effort to re-register the domain.
I am not sure what to think about VeriSign and the Aussies. Is Network Solutions involved? If one of their databases was compromised, it seems to me they would be very upset. On the other hand, they wouldn't like that known either. If I had to guess, I would suspect something of an inside job---like hacking into Panix or Dotster(?) maybe.
I did a dig, whois, and nslookup and found the same things reported. What interests me is how to hack the A, NS, and MX records in a dns server. Knowing the process (without details) or potential method would be interesting to explore. It seems to me, you have to actually hack the server, gain root access and re-write the record files.
The government sleuth angle didn't occur to me. Panix isn't all that subversive is it? I understand the US government motivation behind the Indymedia shut downs, but is Panix hosting all kinds of anti-Iraq, anti-Israel, anti-Bush sites?
The ruse of using a Las Vegas address, some UK holding company, and moving the dns to an Australian company says something pretty strange. Whoever is behind this wasn't just an idiot prankster. I am not sure what to think about that. It seems dark and nasty and non-commercial, i.e. political. Maybe not. Maybe a rightwing nurd engineering student type at MIT?
CG