Implementing a new network protocol that sits side by side with UDP/TCP rather than on top requires super-user privileges in order to create a raw socket (SOCK_RAW). Similarly for many network servers such as a web server super-user or root privileges are needed to open a port below 1024. A process with super-user rights has full access to the system but for a internet server this is not a good idea as a simple software defect could allow a hacker to gain full control of the host, or in rare circumstances the program could destroy the system installation itself. Therefore it is common for a server process to drop its super-user privileges after using them, but drop to whom?
The popular name is
nobody, but what is the
user identifier (UID) and
group ID (GID) of nobody? -2 is popular, but both in 16 bit (65534) and 32 bit (4294967294) representation for example Linux and Mac OS X respectively. Some older platforms arbitrary values like 60001 for Irix, and even earlier implementations of Linux used 99.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, its Superman Kubrick and a Bearbrick.
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