System Preference items randomly unlock without my authorization

Recently I noticed that the lock at the bottom of my network and sharing preferences has been unlocking without my authorization. I normally leave the preferences locked and then if I need to make any changes I unlock it. I then lock it back up after I am finished. However, about three days ago I noticed that the lock was unlocked. I tried to lock it but it would not lock so I restarted the computer and was then able to lock it. I figured that some "gremlin" was in my machine. However, last night and this morning, I noticed that the lock was again unlocked. This time I was able to lock it without a restart.
Any takers on this issue. I just want to make sure that my computer has not been hacked remotely and that someone is not unlocking these preferences in order to execute some malicious activity on my computer.
Thanks in advance for the help.

Thomas A Reed wrote:
If someone had hacked your machine, that little lock - and those preferences, for that matter - would be of little interest or consequence. The fact that it wouldn't lock (+Why wouldn't it lock? What happened when you tried?) but worked fine after a restart suggests to me you had a glitch of some kind. Not sure what, exactly.
When I clicked on the lock it did nothing other than stay unlocked. The restart fixed that issue but as mentioned in my original post, I found the lock again unlocked on two occasions after that. However, on these two subsequent occasions, I was able to engage the lock without a restart.
Thomas A Reed wrote:
Out of curiosity, why are you concerned about those locks? The fact that they're misbehaving on your machine aside, I've always found them rather silly, personally. If someone has access to your account, they can do worse than change your settings, and there are better ways of keeping trusted-but-unreliable users (like kids) from messing up your settings (namely, not letting them use your account in the first place).
This is good to know. I wrongly assumed that these locks were an important security feature to prevent unauthorized changes to system components that would leave my system vulnerable to unauthorized use.
The first thing I will do is trash the system preferences plist and restart. That seems to be the prevailing recommendation thus far.
Thanks,
Sean

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