mysterious BackupNow folder w/ .system file w/ 0 owner, preventing backup

What would cause a “BackupNow” folder to appear in my installation of wordpress. What would cause the empty .system folder inside that folder to belong to owner “0” and prevent me from transferring, editing, or changing permissions on that folder?

Recent happenings that might be relevant:
Recently had my host “nuke” my account so I could start over with a clean install of wordpress and fresh files (after discovering my site had been hacked and my backups weren’t complete.) The reinstall went fine, I installed several security plugins, and performed a full backup of all of the website files to my desktop using FTP. No problems.

I then activated ssh from cpanel so I could use SFTP to transfer files. I changed file permissions on some key files and directories to be more secure (not the BackupNow or .system files in question). I activated further features from the already installed and activated security plugins.

Now, I am having trouble backing up the files to my desktop using either FTP or SFTP. I am not sure if it has something to do with the SSH/SFTP change, permission changes, security plugins, or something else entirely. I’ve been doing a lot of work on securing the site before adding content, so I don’t know what caused this issue and don’t want to move forward before I clear it up.

When I try to backup all of the files to my desktop, the transfer fails with this message:

SSH Error: Listing directory failed
/home2/abc123/BackupNow/.system
Permission denied (SSH_FX_PERMISSION_DENIED: The user does not have sufficient permissions to perform the operation.). The user does not have sufficient permissions to perform the operation..

I tried to change the permissions on the /home2/abc123/BackupNow/.system file and got this message:

SSH Error: Cannot change permissions
/home2/abc123/BackupNow/.system
Permission denied (SSH_FX_PERMISSION_DENIED: The user does not have sufficient permissions to perform the operation.). The user does not have sufficient permissions to perform the operation..

I am the only user on the site, but the owner of this file is 0 for some reason. I don’t what that means and can’t seem to change it using Cyberduck. I don’t know where these folders came from. It wasn’t in the first full backup I did using FTP. I don’t have any backup plugins installed.

I was able to backup my public folder without issues, but when I try to backup other folders it sometimes fails without a detailed message of why, so I can’t tell what other folders or files may also be causing the failure, or if other files have changed owners.

Do you have any idea what may have caused this folder to appear and this 0 owner to be assigned? This is keeping me from backing up all of the files, is that a problem or do I really only need certain files backed up? If I do a reinstall of WordPress will that solve anything? I would like to understand why this happened so I can avoid it again if a reinstall is necessary.

I am still new to this, thank you in advance for your help!