Have I been hacked?

I'm at a loss on how to explain this...

I have windoze xp with all the latest patches running on my laptop,
firewalls up with 'no exceptions' ticked and AVG to protect my client
from email virus and I rarely, if ever take files via external source
(like USB key or whatever). In addition to AVG my ISP also virus scans
my emails on the POP3 server using Nortan Symantec.

I occassionally go through my temp directory and clean out the
contents and discovered a (hidden and read only) directory that had
the name of a project that I worked on in 1999/2000. The thing is,
the project was on an older laptop that is long gone/dead. On top of
that I know 100% that I do not, nor have I ever had a directory named
in that way before - nor do I have a zip file anywhere on my system
that corresponds to the subdirectory in my temp directory. I mean...
if the project was called Gonzo then I have a sub directory in my
windows temp directory called

Temporary Directory 1 for Gonzo.zip

In there, there were a number of jar and tmp files. I removed the tmp
and jar files but before I removed the one and only text file I begun
to question why the temp directory existed at all, never mind the
contents.

I know jar files are associated with java - I have removed all my java
cache files and any java related jar file that might exist in some
temporary directory and I have done a full scan with AVG and it has
not found anything on my system.

The one text file I found was called newSystem.txt and it does have
questions that would have related to the IT project I had back then
though I cannot recall 100% if they are questions I would have written
or if they were extracted from a document written by someone else.

Anyone know if I have been hacked or if some trojan might exist that
might have ferreted around my machine? anyone care to offer me advice?
I do my best to keep my machine clean and have my every day user as a
Limited account and only use my master (admin) account to install/
remove software.

The only other thing I could find suspicious is a large 700mb temp
file called =$0C490A91.t$m

Does anyone have any idea why such a file would exist? Its really
driving me crazy...

Thanks!

Re: Have I been hacked?

"Randell_D" wrote in message
news:1187822700.683890.101200@x40g2000prg.googlegroups.com.. .
> I'm at a loss on how to explain this...
>



> Does anyone have any idea why such a file would exist? Its really
> driving me crazy...
>

Who is sitting behind the keyboard and mouse doing the typing and clicking?

You might want to start there.

Re: Have I been hacked?

Randell_D wrote:

> I'm at a loss on how to explain this...
>
> I have windoze xp with all the latest patches running on my laptop,
> firewalls up with 'no exceptions' ticked and AVG to protect my client
> from email virus


AVG is a virus scanner, it cannot protect you from viruses.

> I occassionally go through my temp directory and clean out the
> contents and discovered a (hidden and read only) directory that had
> the name of a project that I worked on in 1999/2000. The thing is,
> the project was on an older laptop that is long gone/dead. On top of
> that I know 100% that I do not, nor have I ever had a directory named
> in that way before - nor do I have a zip file anywhere on my system
> that corresponds to the subdirectory in my temp directory. I mean...
> if the project was called Gonzo then I have a sub directory in my
> windows temp directory called
>
> Temporary Directory 1 for Gonzo.zip
>
> In there, there were a number of jar and tmp files. I removed the tmp
> and jar files but before I removed the one and only text file I begun
> to question why the temp directory existed at all, never mind the
> contents.
>
> I know jar files are associated with java - I have removed all my java
> cache files and any java related jar file that might exist in some
> temporary directory and I have done a full scan with AVG and it has
> not found anything on my system.
>
> The one text file I found was called newSystem.txt and it does have
> questions that would have related to the IT project I had back then
> though I cannot recall 100% if they are questions I would have written
> or if they were extracted from a document written by someone else.
>
> Anyone know if I have been hacked or if some trojan might exist that
> might have ferreted around my machine?


Why? It just seems like you carried over a lot of crap data, but nothing
malicious.


> The only other thing I could find suspicious is a large 700mb temp
> file called =$0C490A91.t$m
>
> Does anyone have any idea why such a file would exist?


Stupid software...