Getting warnings all of the sudden,

I just started doing a website for someone and their current gallery is getting these warnings.

"Warning: fopen(/hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/albums/.users/.htaccess) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/platform/fs_unix.php on line 55

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/classes/gallery/UserDB.php on line 57

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/classes/gallery/UserDB.php on line 58

Warning: fopen(/hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/albums/albumdb.dat.lock) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/platform/fs_unix.php on line 55
Error: Could not open lock file (/hsphere/local/home/exklusiv/gallery.exklusivmotorsports.com/albums/albumdb.dat.lock)!"

The old web guy says maybe it was a hacker but does not know what to do about it.

Does anyone have any ideas? Is it maybe just a permission problem?

Gallery URL (optional but very useful):http://exklusivmotorsports.com
Gallery version: 1
Apache version:
PHP version (don't just say PHP 4, please):
Graphics Toolkit:
Operating system:
Web browser/version (if applicable):