Hacked by a font?

albo (apparently) - 11:48am Mar 16, 2006 PST
via email

Hi,
I'm not sure what this means, but I figured someone here would:
I downloaded a free font from here:
http://www.graffitifonts.com/fonts/5cent.zip
unzipped it and put the font file in library/fonts. I started up
Photoshop and tried the font out, and also had a look at it in Font
Book. I downloaded and did the same thing with a couple of other fonts
from the same Website and was in Photoshop fooling around with a line of
text in the 5cent font when the text suddenly changed to a string of
(from what I can remember) symbols, letters, and numbers in a different
font. Photoshop sometimes does odd things so I didn't think about it
much. I went back into Firefox to look for something on Google and when
I entered the search terms "graffiti drips" and hit return the page that
came up had some of the text on the page in a graffiti-like font. I
thought "Huh - I guess that's one of those funny Google-things that
those funny Google people do - I wonder if it'll go back to the standard
typeface if I put in a non-graffiti-related query?"
Nope. I then looked at some other pages I had open and saw that they
were also in graffiti-font. Uh-oh.
I looked in library/fonts and 5cent was nowhere to be found, though it
still showed up in Photoshop (which I had never quit) in the fonts list.
I was starting to wonder if 5cent might have hidden itself inside of
another font, so I went into Firefox preferences and fooled around with
the advanced fonts stuff for a minute and figured out that Arial was the
problem.
I zipped the corrupted Arial into an archive (which I have if anyone
wants to see it) and tossed it in the trash. I tried to empty the trash
and was told that Arial and 5cent were in use and couldn't be emptied,
so I forced an empty with Onyx. I replaced the thrown-away Arial
suitcase with a copy that I emailed to myself from another computer, and
now everything is (I hope!) OK.
My set up: 1.6 GHz G5, OS10.4.5
I don't know if that's clear, but I do know it's weird and I'd like to
know what's going on.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Albo