Possible attack?

[Kevin Bullock <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

Hey all --

Something very strange and suspicious just happened -- my box was brought
to a grinding halt for a completely unknown reason. The only unusual thing
I can find in my logs is:

Apr  5 21:05:23 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process xscreensaver
Apr  5 21:06:11 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process gnome-terminal
Apr  5 21:09:11 dysonsphere kernel: VM: killing process communicator-sm

And those were after the system became useable again. The other wierd
thing is this in a finger @localhost:

kbullock  Kevin Bullock  *pts/0       1  Apr  5 14:34 (lisieux.cs.csbsju.edu)

lisieux.cs is the machine in the CS lab that I was logged into earlier
today. This persists even after I shut down sshd (which was how I logged
in).

Could this have been an attack of some sort? No cron jobs were scheduled
to run, and none ran. Why did this happen?

Pacem in Terris / Mir / Shanti / Salaam / Heiwa
Kevin R. Bullock