unknown user... ???

[mnkyspnk5w]

ok, to the point: sometimes i'll poke around folders under the share, and i'll find that permissions have been given to "unknown user .... (random numbers and letters)". i just wanted to know if this was evidence of someone cracking into my system or if it's a really bad bug... or is it a worm that mcafee virusscan 6.0 isn't finding?

disclaimers:
-i'm running winxp pro., and previously was running win2k.
-i have personal firewall software, but generally consider them more troublesome than they're worth.
-i disabled file sharing and have had it disabled all this time (after a clean installation of winxp).
-i disabled the default shares of my operational and storage drive and deleted the "everyone" permissions from them.

i'm just curious, thanks.

 

[bsobel]

Usually that is a result of having permissions assigned to user accounts that have since been deleted.
Bill

 

[Saltin]

That's correct. The alpha numeric string you see in place of a User name is the Account's SID. This string is how the OS id's user accounts. The names we put on them are just user friendly tags.
In this case, you have likely deleted a user account that you created a while back. The computer is unable to find the user name associated with the permission entry in the ACL, and it shows the SID instead.
Nothing to worry about, just remove it.