Tracking down cpu hogging processes

Found one of my boxes a little slow today, running top showed several processes running, hogging the cpu.

All were apparently owned by 'root', command 'perl' and state 'swread'.

So I killed them all off, now the box is idle again.

If this happens again, what can I do to try and locate the source of these?

I don't know if it was a user running something dodgy, or perhaps a cron that has been set to run at the wrong time???

 

 

 

 

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