Thanks for your input. Let me tell you what brought me to this point if I can. Even before I thought I had malware there were informational boxes flashing on my screen. They were there less than a second and I was never able to read them. They looked like the "Verifying File" boxes that I see when some non-App Store software updates.
Yesterday, one of those "Verifying File" boxes appeared on my screen long enough for me to see what it was verifying, but it disappeared an about three seconds. The file name inside was gibberish, something like %%##@@ etc. Another contributor here asked me if I was able to make a screen grab and I wasn't. He suggested I go into the log folder, where I saw hundreds of lines of data. Some talked of thing like software bridge failure, etc. I was in over my head, thanked him and quit the process.
Admittedly, I am a novice here. I've used MACS since the late G4 PowerPC days but never had to troubleshoot or investigate them. And Yes, I ran the Intego anti-virus produce since the early Intel days and even MacKeeper before that. I never had a problem. I even used CCleaner to keep things tidy.
A MAC technician I once worked with advised me to turn cookies off in Safari. I did so and one day after doing an incremental Monterey update, I tried to log in here to ask about the possibility of whitelisting cookies. At first Safari let me in but the window closed (if I remember correctly) and another Safari window asking me for my system password appeared. I did a hard reset and since then worried that I let something in, even though the security software says I have not.
Here's where I am. Yesterday's Verifying File window with the gibberish file name combined with the Safari issue about two months ago, has me wanting to delete the SSD. Am I over reacting?
