1

Yesterday I was on a call with some friends on the discord when suddenly the sound of the windows was silenced and my cursor started to move robotically, as if I was fighting a tug of war with someone who moved the mouse in the opposite direction to me.

At the same time I restarted my computer, and when I started windows my cursor started to move by itself, closing several programs that I had opened at startup. I disconnected the computer from the internet and restarted the modem, and right after that everything went back to normal.

Did I just got hacked? I don't remember downloading any suspicious files in the past few days that could give that kind of access to someone.

I scanned with several antivirus but nothing was found, I checked files that were starting up with the system and the only suspicious thing I found was a trace of a free vpn that I had downloaded a few weeks ago, in addition the malwarebytes program accused trojans on my uTorrent but from what i searched i noticed that it was a common thing to happen.

James Hyde
  • 1,071
  • 6
  • 9
Andrei
  • 11
  • 1

1 Answers1

5

Yeah, it sounds like you were hacked. Your mouse cursor isn't supposed to have a life of its own beyond your control! It sounds like someone was using a Remote Access Tool (RAT) on your computer. That is very bad, and you should assume they have full control of everything on your computer.

The fact that the symptons disappeared when you reconnected does not mean you are now safe. Things may be done to your system without you noticing it, or maybe the attacker will take control again later. Don't just assume that the problem is solved because you can no longer see it.

You need to do a complete reinstall of your system. Do not connect to the internet before that is done. You can read more here: Help! My home PC has been infected by a virus! What do I do now?

Anders
  • 65,052
  • 24
  • 180
  • 218
  • 1
    A Trojan can give those identical behaviors, in another hand I can assure you defective mouse can _have a life of its own_. So the RAT premise is not sure. – elsadek Dec 14 '20 at 16:43
  • 3
    @elsadek I think that a defective mouse that goes around closing programs is another story. It's one thing for a mouse to be taking action of its own. It's much, much, much more unlikely for it to be taking actual actions. Scrolling around the screen randomly? Sure. Scrolling to a corner of a window and coincidentally closing a program? Probably not but maybe. Closing multiple programs? Definitely not. – Conor Mancone Dec 14 '20 at 18:26
  • The close buttons are in the same corner for all open windows, this one supports the likelihood of multiple closes. – elsadek Dec 14 '20 at 18:55
  • @elsadek Yeah, could be something else. But I think there is enough cause for concern here to nuke from orbit. – Anders Dec 14 '20 at 21:01