Internet Service Provider (ISP) Panix are today recovering from having their domain name hijacked over the weekend.
At 04:30 (US-EST) on Saturday morning, Panix's main domain name, panix.com, was hijacked by parties unknown. The registration of the panix.com domain name was moved to a company in Australia, the actual DNS records were moved to a company seemingly in the United Kingdom (but with servers in Canada and corporate registration in Delaware), and panix.com's email was redirected to servers in Canada.
None of the domain name systems exploited to perform this hijack were under Panix's control.
As the hijacking occurred over the weekend, Panix had great trouble reaching responsible parties at the other companies involved. Control of the domain was not returned to Panix until 18:00 on Sunday.
Google have a cached version of the page that replaced the original Panix web site.
It is believed the domain hijacking came about following a recent change of policy by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the firm responsible for management of domain names on the Internet.
Panix have contacted the authorities, but it is unclear what, if any, laws have been broken.