hidden desktop file: ~$hack tool product key virus alert.pptx -What do

Hey all,

So I've been dealing with a bad drive issue (here, in case anyone cares- Have a hairy disk recovery - the best way? (found.000 folders))

But long story short, as part of the process, I've 'shown hidden files' and also 'shown protected system files'. I usually have hidden files/folders shown, but not protected system files. Checking that, for this problem, was new.

And once I did I noticed that there were some new icons on my desktop. Two desktop.ini, which are fine, but also, a powerpoint icon labelled - "~$hack tool product key virus alert.pptx". Never seen that before and can't guess what it is. Because I like to live on the edge, I tried to open it, and got an error and powerpoint offered to repair the file. It said "If you trust the source of this presentation, click Repair". Well, I live on the edge but I'm not a total moron, so I cancelled that.

I googled the name but nothing came up. It is a .pptx file type. I do use Powerpoint extensively on this computer. The name has me weirded out, for sure.

Any idea what this is and what I should do with it?

Malwarebytes local scan and Gary's Hood online file virus scanner Came up clean. Virus total kinda got stuck on checking the hash.

Try3 said:

Have you searched your computer and your related drives [such as backup drives] for hack tool product key virus alert.pptx?

Denis

Hi,

I haven't, no. I just started one now though. But.... I'm not playing dumb here, promise, but... I'm not sure why I would?

Is it because a filename with a tilde '~' is how Microsoft Office keeps files open when you're working on them? I've noticed that before, placeholder files in Word for open documents. I guess that's possible but I've never worked with a document with that name, or any kind of similar name, as far as I can remember. Certainly not recently, and Office usually destroys the temp file after a document is closed.

But, it's a fair idea so I searched using regular windows file explorer search and there's nothing.

My thought, in posting about it, was... some kind of background macro virus or something that sits in Powerpoint somehow. I don't know if that's possible, of course, but maybe something like that.

I think I'll try to convert it to pdf online and then open it and see if I see anything.

Try3 said:

Merely because
~$hack tool product key virus alert.pptx
is the name of the temporary file created by PowerPoint whilst you are editing

Denis

Ok, yeah, that's what I figured. I don't really play around with hacking tools so I don't really know. But I am kinda 'all over the place' with my interests, and am interested in all sorts of computer stuff in general, so I guess anything is possible.

Well, virus and malware scan came up clean. Can't find that file on my drives anywhere. Web search didn't turn up anything. Can't convert it to PDF online.

So I guess I'll just delete it and go on with my life, lol...

Thanks for taking a look at this-