It's most likely me just being paranoid but twice today something odd has happened and I wondered if someone might know what it.

Earlier I noticed my laptop was a bit hotter than usual and the fan had been on for longer than usual. Sometimes this happens with certain websites if they are open for a while - especially with flash adverts etc. But when I looked to see what it was hogging the CPU it was "opagohsmxc". I searched and came up with 0 results :/ It was using, maybe, 33% of the processor constantly. I killed it and thought nothing more of it.

Then later the laptop was hot again. This time it was "kwvzxsmosa" - again no search results. But this time this CPU usage is ~150%. Killed again.

And I've now just realised it's hot again. Now it's "plamiutafr".

I don't install dodgy things. It's Archlinux.

Next time you see one, run a "ps -ef | grep <name>" to see if you can get some more information about it, including possibly a path and any command line arguments. You should also disconnect that machine from the net until you figure it out.

Seems to me this are not wired but randomly created process names. Maybe it is some kind of "malware" that uses your cpu. Read about background processes that consume cpu here. Probably someone is mining bitcoins on your machine or just some arch bug

To get rid of it, check boot process if something weird there,..

Thanks for the replies. I pressed 'c' while looking at 'top' one time and it showed that it was 'grep' was running - but I lost the screenshot and can't remember the details.

I restarted and it has been fine since. I'll keep my eye on it and definitely disconnect internet overnight.