After a hacker attack I am in the process of preparing my websites to be able to run on PHP5 and with Register_globals off. Meanwhile I would like to change file permissions as a number of files - primarily images - have permission 777. However, quite a lot of these have "owner/group" set as "99 99" where the others have "512 512". I cannot change permissions for those files with "99 99", nor from an FTP-client nor from within cpanel.

I do not have root access. I guess I could ask my webhost to do it for me, but I basically don't understand how I can be put in a situation where I am unable to manage the file system when I am the only one who has dealt with these files.

Hope someone can explain this to me.

Thanks!

If you have been hacked, the the perp may well have gained enough access to chown stuff. Personally, I'd always have root access to any box I was supposed to admin. I believe most hosters have this option, but may charge extra.