In Red Hat Linux 7.1, the /etc/identd.key is created by /etc/rc.d/init.d/identd with owner and group of "identd", and permission bits are set to 0600. From the security point of view it would be better to have /etc/identd.key owned by user root, group identd, and permission 0640. With these permissions, even when the remote exploit is found in identd, it cannot be used to modify the key file. Even better solution would be to have /etc/identd.key owned by user root, group root and permission 0600. The current identd reads the key _before_ setuid(identd) and setgid(identd) is called. -Yenya
pidentd-3.0.12-6 has ownership root.root - thanks for your feedback.