[sand88]

. Anyone who runs their webservice (e.g. Apache) as root deserves everything they get. ,

If I am not mistaken most, if not all, pre-compiled binaries do not support Apache running as root.

I have built and manage a few Linux servers and I know of no reason one would want to run Apache as root?

Apache always starts as root to bind to privileged ports but immediately changes to user context.

[dayglored]

> ... I know of no reason one would want to run Apache as root? Apache always starts as root to bind to privileged ports but immediately changes to user context.

Correct.

But I have seen instances where the person who set it up, having an incomplete understanding of how to properly allow a web visitor write into a filesystem, simply configured Apache to run as root so it didn't encounter any problems writing.

As you might expect, hilarity ensued.

[zeugma]

Apache always starts as root to bind to privileged ports but immediately changes to user context.

Yup. Generally runs as 'nobody', and that user shouldn't have write access to anything important.