Running Mint 13 Maya. Recently noticed system running slow, Top shows a process constantly using a large amount of CPU time, identified by a string of random letters 10 characters long. If I kill it, the process immediately restarts with a new PID and a new 10 random-character name, and uses the same excess of CPU time.

If I reboot, same thing.

Using pstree I see the process is started directly by init.

If I look up one of the process numbers under /proc, there is a cmdline file, which when opened has a varying line of code in it, seems to revolve around eth0.

If I run ls -l /proc/PID/exe I get

/bin/10 char name

but again the 10 character name changes each time I kill the process.

How do I figure out what program is restarting this process?

Thanks.

Also, if I run ps auxf , the PID links to "who"

It's probably listed in the inittab. (Who's the owner of the process? init?)

Although this sort of behavior is, shall we say, "quite suspicious," it is also remotely possible that it is "benign, and malfunctioning."

Be aware(!) that someone might have hijacked your system and placed a rogue program in place of the (rarely if ever executed) who command. Proceed with caution, albeit not paranoia.

There should be entries in the system log to correspond with whatever's going on.

I was wondering if the system was somehow compromised.

I found a file with the current 10 character name, under the /etc/init.d/ folder. Here is what's in the file:

#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 12345 90 90
# description: mievhevcfl
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: mievhevcfl
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 1 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: mievhevcfl
### END INIT INFO
case $1 in
start)
/usr/bin/mievhevcfl
;;
stop)
;;
*)
/usr/bin/mievhevcfl
;;
esac


Does this mean chkconfig is the offender?