The chown(2) system call turns off the setuid and/or setgid bits as appropriate, so this is not a concern. except in this case: splode /tmp# ls -l sh -r-xr-xr-x 1 mrg wheel 335872 Nov 7 20:05 sh splode /tmp# chmod u+s sh splode /tmp# chown root sh splode /tmp# ls -l sh -r-sr-xr-x 1 root wheel 335872 Nov 7 20:05 sh .mrg.