I consider the fact that it is written in C a feature.
This is why you should never use C in networked code or when working with third-party data unless you absolutely bloody well have to: It's just too many ways to fuck up, and most programmers will.
If things like memory management are not the first priority when writing every line of code, then you shouldn't be using C, and that's really the only reason you should be using C, when there's a specific need for memory management.
Not surprisingly, this is exactly why the world has moved beyond C for the application layer, it's painful to have to think about that stuff constantly, so people just don't (this being an example).