A blogger for computer and Internet security giant Sophos sounded the red alert Tuesday, announcing that a “primary WHOIS registry” (huh?) had been hacked, and records of  sites belonging to Microsoft and Google had been vandalized.  Indeed, a WHOIS search on a UNIX box returned some uninteresting DNS performance art. The author of the blog post didn’t realize he was using, essentially, a modified substring search, so he was seeing a variety of  inexact matches containing records from a mess of DNS servers – all unrelated to the companies in question. The original post was replaced with an apology and redaction within a few hours, but not before a standard complement of rotten tomatoes had been tossed in their general direction.

Marketing industry reporter extrordinaire Ken Magill serves up another scoop: after fewer than five days in the saddle, the new CEO of Lyris is reportedly ready to lay off about 15% of it’s work force (somewhere between 40 and 45 jobs). The downsizing is apparently part of a shift in corporate strategy away from small business senders in favor of larger companies that send in higher volumes. Some within the company are reportedly wondering (out loud, to Magill) whether the job slashing is part of a move to make the company appear more attractive to a prospective buyer.

Microsoft cut the legs out from under the Waledac spam ‘botnet by seizing 276 domains used for command and control. Microsoft filed a suit against Waledac operators, in which it sought an award of the c&c domains. The botnet operators have 14 days to appeal the default judgment (thereby revealing their identities), which no one really expects they’ll do.  Unlike previous attempts at take-downs, it looks like this one is sticking.

“Houston, we have a problem … it’s called ‘spam’,” tweeted NASA’s Lunar Science Institute, as the “here you have”/VBMania e-mail trojan spread like wildfire across the Intarwebs Thursday, choking and overwhelming e-mail servers and stealing user passwords as it went. Various media outlets reported that the worm has hit NASA, Google, Coca Cola, Comcast, and ABC/Disney, and the Department of Homeland Security.

And to kick your weekend off with a smile, here’s a chuckle from cartoonist Brad Colbow about opting out of retail e-mail campaigns. Remind you of any clients you know?