user owned files in /etc after hard drive install

Hello everyone. 

I searched the archives, and have not seen any
references to the following problem.

I use knoppix-installer-latest-web to install
Knoppix V3.4 17 May 2004 onto my computer using
the Debian installation method.

Now in setting up services and editing
configuration files in /etc, I noticed that a
bunch of important files and directories are
owned by a user, and not root. Here is the
output of `ls -l /etc/ | grep username`

-rw-r--r--    1 username  username       685 Feb 17 08:47 hosts.allow
-rw-r--r--    1 username  username      2284 Oct 25  2002 inittab
-rw-r--r--    1 username  username      1731 May  9 12:37 profile
drwxr-xr-x    2 username  username      4096 Jun 26 13:36 rc0.d
drwxr-xr-x    2 username  username      4096 Jun 26 13:36 rc6.d
drwxr-xr-x    2 username  username      4096 Jun 27 14:36 rcS.d

Within directories, there are files owned by the
user as well. For example, `ls -l /etc/rcS.d/ |
grep username` turns up all files starting with S.
I think everyone will agree that a user should not
have control over these directories. Anyone notice
this?

I can fix this with a shell script, but I am
worried about what caused this.

Franco

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