My mouse cursor is moving on its own.
Have I been hacked? Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com.
Let's dive right into the question.
"If someone not you,
has control of your cursor, even if nothing else on the screen is
changing, they are exercising control of your machine.
Cursors do not idly float around the screen.
Right? Important question.
And the answer is..." Well,
as with so many things, the answer is maybe. There are many reasons a mouse
cursor might look to be moving on its own on your screen, and the fact that it's
moving may or may not be an indication of a hack.
And the fact that it's not moving may or
may not be an indication that you're not hacked.
It gets pretty confusing pretty quick.
So let's divide this into a couple of different scenarios.
First of all, Carl benign movement.
Benign movement is mouse movement
that just happens because of something benign. Usually.
In fact, I'll say 99 times out of 100,
it's because your mouse is dirty or the surface that it's on is dirty
or the surface that you're on is somehow confusing the mouse, for example,
if you've got your mouse on a sheet of glass or
something like that, very often that can cause the mouse
pointer, the little laser or whatever it is, it's being used in the mouse
to determine location, to get really confused about exactly where it is.
And sometimes that confusion will manifest as mouse movement.
The mouse cursor may jump around the screen, the mouse cursor may start
to inch its way across the screen, various things like that.
The very first thing you should do is
to pick up your mouse, look at the underside, brush it off,
maybe use a little bit of compressed air to clean out the optics,
the area where the sensor is, and then also make sure that it's
on a surface that I would say is non reflective and opaque.
It could be a sheet of paper, actually. That's nice.
It's got a lot of things for the mouse
optics to take a look at to understand movement.
But if you're on a piece of glass, just quickly throw something under
the mouse and see if that doesn't make things better.
Obviously, investing in a mouse pad may or may not be something useful.
Mousepads going to work for you just fine, but that's benign movement.
And honestly, it happens to me.
It happens all the time just because,
yeah, I've got dog fur and I've got other things around here that tend to float
around onto my desk and get clogged up underneath the mouse.
So look for that first nine times out
of ten, the benign movement you're seeing is usually nothing more than dirt.
Now, malicious movement is another thing, of course.
And yeah, if you've ever used, say,
a remote access program like Log Me In or Teamviewer or remote desktop or any
of a number of other remote access tools, you've seen it right.
Somebody else is controlling your desktop and as they control your desktop,
your mouse is moving around depending on what they're doing.
But they're doing something right. They're doing something.
You would see what they're doing.
You would see them open windows and close
windows or type into programs or just do things.
They're there for a reason.
And presumably, if you've allowed them
to have remote access, well, you know what that reason is, right?
Maybe they're helping you with something.
But the bottom line is that, yeah, of course, the mouse is going to move as
they do things because they're doing things.
Could the mouse move and nothing else happen?
It could.
I mean, maybe while they're talking to you and not actually doing anything on their
screen, their hand is on their mouse, kind of moving it around.
I know that I do that myself from time to time.
I'll just have the mouse moving around and not actually doing anything.
But the bottom line is that if you've actually enabled remote access to your
machine, it's by definition you've given remote access to somebody.
And yes, you're going to see the mouse pointer move in response to whatever it is
they're doing in whatever it is that you might be doing at the same time.
There's a scenario, though,
that I want to talk about that I call malicious non movement.
All right.
That is, you are hacked, but your mouse isn't moving.
That is actually the more common type of hack hacks are not common.
I want to be clear about this.
They happen, but they are not common and they are absolutely not the first
thing that I jump to when something is behaving a little bit weirdly.
But think about it if somebody tries to hack your machine.
They want to hide that fact, they want to make it look like nothing is
happening while they're doing what they're doing.
So if they're moving the mouse pointer, they're not doing their job very well.
Right. They're hacking very poorly.
And in fact, to the extent that hacks
exist, they rarely, if ever, are that apparent.
They rarely cause the mouse pointer to move.
What typically happens when there is a remote access Trojan or Bot or whatever
allows someone else to access your machine is they've set up a hidden command prompt.
They're doing all this stuff via the keyboard.
They're not using the mouse.
They're not using a graphical user interface.
They're doing things by running scripts
in a command prompt or in some other way that you don't see.
So the fact that the mouse is moving
on its own is rarely, rarely an indication of a hack.
And the fact that it's not moving doesn't really tell you anything.
Now, here's one thing you can do that I
call it a very quick test for remote access.
And that is if this is happening,
if you see your mouse pointer moving and it continues to move without your
doing anything, disconnect yourself from the network,
disconnect yourself from the Internet, do whatever it takes to render your
computer incapable of reaching the Internet, because if you can't reach
the Internet, the Internet can't reach you.
And if the mouse movement continues, well, then, you know, it's something else.
If the mouse movement stops, OK,
maybe it's time to run an anti malware scan or take some more security steps
to scan your machine for malware or remote access tools.
But the bottom line is that if if it truly is remote access, well,
by disconnecting from the Internet, you've disabled remote access
and that should tell you whether or not something is really going on.
The real bottom line here is that
I don't worry about mouse movement as an indicator of anything other than dirt.
It's one of those things that a lot of people get a little bit worked up about
because they don't understand it and it's rarely an indication of malware.
That being said, of course,
keep yourself safe on the Internet, know what that means.
Keep your system up to date,
run anti malware scans don't open attachments that you don't expect.
Don't fall for phishing attempts.
All of those things are the ways that malware gets installed onto your machine.
And that's what remote access is.
It's just another form of malware that you
have somehow allowed to be installed in your machine.
Stop it at the source.
Practice safe computing and you'll be fine.
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for comments and more, visit Askleo.com/135326.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.