Mangled cache_dir names, core, SSL

Dear followers of the holy squid,

maybe someone of you has wisdom to share.

Our 1.2b23p4 just crashed after 10 days of continuous operation.
cache.log shows multiple

1998/08/21 17:08:22| storeSwapOutFileOpened: Unable to open swapfile:
/pr�xy-data5/00/08/00000207
   ^
   this, of course, must be an 'o', so of course it won't find that
   file. Is there a string processing bug somewhere ?

I'd really really like to send in a stack trace, but I don't manage to get
one. Finally having fiddled with system settings to generate a core file, my
gdb always claims it is the wrong format for a core ('file' thinks
differently, there). Has anyone come across that one ?

Also, are there any know SSL issues ? Reportedly b23 broke some homebanking
stuff that worked w/ b21 or b22.

Thanks in advance,
Markus