On the face of this, it looks like some sort of malware, sure enough. I would assume full compromise, wipe and reinstall from trusted read-only media (official

On the face of this, it looks like some sort of malware, sure enough. I would assume full compromise, wipe and reinstall from trusted read-only media (official install DVDs or somesuch). Make backups before you do that. If you want to be less paranoid, take this up with the vendor beforehand.