CHMOD 777 .htaccess - is this ok?

[shasan]

How secure is leaving .htaccess on CHMOD 777?

I'm using a hosted wordpress solution for a client, and the permalinks don't work unless I chmod .htaccess to 777 so that wordpress can update the mod_rewrites.

Is this secure? If not, any way around this?

[WesleyC]

That's really not very secure at all--is it possible to do a chown on the file to set the owner to PHP's user, then set the permissions to 755? To edit the file manually, you'll have to log in as PHP's user or administrator, but it still may be the best way to go.

[edited by: WesleyC at 2:16 pm (utc) on Aug. 1, 2007]