I'm in a strange situation here. I've been working underneath a computer manager for a while assisting with the administration of a bunch of computers and various other duties. In addition to this, there are several Linux/Unix servers hanging around. I didn't spend too much time with these things however, and my Linux knowledge could be greater. In any case, my boss suddenly resigned, and now I'm responsible for all of this for now. Fortunately my understanding of computers in general is quite extensive and this is aiding me greatly in working with these relatively unfamiliar systems.

Now onto my question. Two of these machines aren't that important, they're running secondary websites (one of these additions is a bit of php code for a room reservation form, and the other is just regular html). Both machines are running some version of Red Hat Enterprise (Fedora is also displayed on the login screen).

The problem is that sometimes the mouse starts going crazy (moving it causes the pointer to jump randomly every few pixels of movement). The mouse is connected to a KVM switch, and the mouse doesn't necessarily go crazy for all the computers at once, and it only occurs on the Fedora boxes (the third is a Windows Server 2003). Removing and reinserting the mouse into the KVM switch fixes the problem temporarily. I'm not sure what causes the problem to begin again.

So I'm wondering if these things are hacked (a mutual security vulnerability due to a lack of updating the Fedora OS)? Would a rescue from the install CD ever fix a hack or would I be better of starting over?

If it's doing this on more than one system I would guess the mouse is starting to fail. I had a optic mouse that would do the same thing, I just replaced the mouse to fix the problem. Trying a different mouse would be the easiest and fist step I would do. Next bypass the KVM switch just to make sure it's not a hardware issue.