Have I been hacked?

[Toque]

I was using Limewire (downloading copyright free files of course!) and I noticed that the files that normally lived on my desktop were absent. I started looking in other folders and as I looked in them the files would disappear. I began to freak. I immediately shutdown my machine (an iMac G5 20" running 10.4.6) and figured that apocalypse had arrived.

When I restarted things were back but moved around. The files on my desktop were arranged vertically and I keep them on the bottom of the screen. Also the oft-acessed files that used to be in the left hand column when a folder was opened had been removed. This is no problem but it has me wondering what happened. Could this have been a glitch or did someone gain access to my machine?

Words of wisdom greatly appreciated.

[barhar]

'... (downloading copyright free files of course!)' - of course ...,

'Could this have been a glitch or did someone gain access to my machine?' - neither.

To answer the post's subject of 'Have I been hacked?' - no.

[Toque]

I was actually dl'ing freebies. Personal videos of people mountain biking.

You have eased my mind about being hacked - thanks for that. Would you have any suggestions about what did happen?

Thanks in advance.

[barhar]

Do not take '- of course' out of context. I have no problem with anyone using peer to peer, etc., software.

'Would you have any suggestions about what did happen?' - no.

'Could this have been a glitch ...' - was too vague; thus 'neither' was appropriate. MacOS X (especially 10.4.x) can 'hic cup', due to itself or the actions of applications. Regardless of what Apple, their representatives, or the Mac zealots say - MacOS X is not freeze / crash proof. It just is not.

For example, some web pages when loading, in 'Safari' are enough to freeze MacOS X; at least in 'Tiger'. I cannot recall whether I booted to 'Panther' and 'Jaguar'; and, if so - had the same result(s) or not; but, I do know that the Mac had to be rebooted.

'LimeWire' may have had something to do with your anomaly.

Boot from your 'Tiger' installation DVD, launch (run, open) 'Disk Utility', and perform the 'Repair Disk' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' operations
- a couple of times each. Then boot from the Mac's internal hard disk drive, use 'LimeWire', and see if the anomaly occurs again. If so, then statistically - 'LimeWire' is at least part of the cause. If not, ...

[symphonix]

One thing I have noticed *will* cause files to be moved around on the desktop, or in folders, and lose their layout is when a program that isn't written for Mac (such as a Java program) directly accesses the file system instead of going through the proper OS subsystems. Limewire is a perfect example of one of these programs that can sometimes do this.

No harm should come to the system: the files are still there, its just that the routines that keep track of where they appear on the desktop/window aren't being called properly. A reboot should make them re-appear.

This same sort of thing also happens if you dual-boot your Mac into a Linux system and access your files - because you're changing your files but the routines that place the icons are not being called.

If you're looking for an alternative to Limewire, try Aquisition, or its free equivalent ACQLite. They access the same network (Gnutella) but are much neater in their presentation and more Mac-friendly.

[fryke]

So, you could also use a different folder than "Desktop" for the app to write to/read from and that would also solve the problem.

[Toque]

I'm not sure this applies since it wasn't just my desktop being messed with. Files in every folder began disappearing. A very bad feeling.

[Veljo]

Throw LimeWire out and use Acquisition. It's much better, and I trust it more