Login screen sometimes freezes and then refreshes to allow normal login. Possible cause?
by linuxuser371038 from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6MB4E)
Archlinux.
I find it somewhat concerning. I will be typing the username but the input freezes for the first letter, then allows the rest but freezes again, not going to the password prompt after having pressed enter, The screen stays frozen and then suddenly refreshes with a new login screen at which point I am able to login normally.
In these cases the password prompt never shows itself until the page refreshes itself again.
I start to have thoughts of is this Lisbeth Salander, or other bad actor, having taken over my machine running a dummy login and routing all the keypresses to her server?
It seems strange that it suddenly 'jolts' after a few seconds to allow normal login again then which makes me suspicious.
Oh yes I will also note some other strange behavior that sometimes happens. Some random keypresses would come on the terminal when logged in and on X, like s s s would by typed and right clicks and suddenly download dialogue box on web browser. This I thought was due to the touchpad so I disabled that in xinput however sometimes that seems to undisable itself somehow but also just this second ago I noticed some weird key pressing when I wasn't typing anything while in vim and yet the keypad hadn't reactivated in this case. Strange indeed.
When things like this happen I go into top often to see if any rogue processes could be running but do not see anything suspicious taking up top processor positions when pressing P but what do I know I don't know what all processes do but nothing seems unfamiliar put it that way from seeing the same processes on other linux installs.
Can this behavior likely be innocent and not sign of an apprehended machine? A quick search did bring up some hits for random keypresses on laptops with no mention of malware attack.
I find it somewhat concerning. I will be typing the username but the input freezes for the first letter, then allows the rest but freezes again, not going to the password prompt after having pressed enter, The screen stays frozen and then suddenly refreshes with a new login screen at which point I am able to login normally.
In these cases the password prompt never shows itself until the page refreshes itself again.
I start to have thoughts of is this Lisbeth Salander, or other bad actor, having taken over my machine running a dummy login and routing all the keypresses to her server?
It seems strange that it suddenly 'jolts' after a few seconds to allow normal login again then which makes me suspicious.
Oh yes I will also note some other strange behavior that sometimes happens. Some random keypresses would come on the terminal when logged in and on X, like s s s would by typed and right clicks and suddenly download dialogue box on web browser. This I thought was due to the touchpad so I disabled that in xinput however sometimes that seems to undisable itself somehow but also just this second ago I noticed some weird key pressing when I wasn't typing anything while in vim and yet the keypad hadn't reactivated in this case. Strange indeed.
When things like this happen I go into top often to see if any rogue processes could be running but do not see anything suspicious taking up top processor positions when pressing P but what do I know I don't know what all processes do but nothing seems unfamiliar put it that way from seeing the same processes on other linux installs.
Can this behavior likely be innocent and not sign of an apprehended machine? A quick search did bring up some hits for random keypresses on laptops with no mention of malware attack.