Strangely named files on all my hard drives

[dennisresevfan]

I've seen lots of files on some of my hard drives before with seemingly random names. Long strings of letters and numbers. e.g. "9a2dca40ebf09d65a87dce"

These seem to contain Microsoft EULA documents which suggest they're something to do with .NET framework. I'm not sure whether or not they need to still be there, though. They seem to be saved in completely random places.

Today though I discovered other file with much stranger names and contents. e.g. Tuser83, 00bdefinitions160, Acworking164, Xorganised173

These each seem to contain a jpg, xlsx, sql, txt, xls, doc, rtf, pem, mbd, and docx file, with weird names like "killing jack fourteen.rtf" or "profound statement hal substantially.txt"

Virus and spyware scanners find nothing wrong with these files. They cannot be opened to reveal any actual readable content.

Should I be worried? I've never seen these before except the .NET files.

They appear to be hidden files but I have all hidden files set to be shown. Also these ones with the weirdest names all seem to have been modified today.

 

[Jesse_20]

The easiest way to see if they are still needed is to boot into safe mode, and rename the folder they are in, by adding .OLD to the end of the folder name.
If you have any apps complain they can't find a file/folder, you know what is using them. If you don't notice a difference, they can probably be deleted, although I'd keep them for several weeks at the minimum just in case.

 

[dennisresevfan]

So I found out what these are...

I think it was Cyberreason Ransom Free or another anti-malware/hacking piece of software. It makes these files as a way of tracking if data on the hard drive is being interfered with. They are apparently harmless.