An unexpected hostname and how I checked before I panicked

The other day I opened my terminal and noticed I was mike@Clearpeak. Considering this was my work computer (and Liquid Light is nothing like Clearpeak) alarm bells started ringing. Before I engaged code-red protocol and suspected a hack, I thought I would check as to where it was coming from. FINDING THE SOURCE My first port-of-call was to ask Claude how I can check where it was coming from. It gave me 4 commands to verify the identity scutil --get HostName scutil --get LocalHostName scutil --get ComputerName hostname Note: scutil is a native mac command line tool Mine came back with: * scutil --get HostName: HostName: not set * scutil --get LocalHostName: Mikes-MacBook-Pro * scutil --get ComputerName: Mike's MacBook Pro * hostname: Clearpeak.localdomain With the local scutil --get HostName coming back not set, macOS goes off to the network to try and get a name from the router. If the router has seen a phone, printer or something else on that IP address, it may well remember the name…