https://securityaffairs.com/192132/hacking/nginx-rift-an-18-...
The project was inspired by that. Also unlike most other projects, nginx is directly exposed to the internet often times which makes it more vulnerable than i.e. Redis/ Valkey or something that would be running within a companies network generally.
"C Bad" is a bit reductionist... but I think there is some truth to the take " Until you have the evidence, don’t bother with hypothetical notions that someone can write 10 million lines of C without ubiquitious memory-unsafety vulnerabilities – it’s just Flat Earth Theory for software engineers" [1]
NSA and other government orgs are also pushing people to stop using C [2] for important software.
[1]. https://alexgaynor.net/2020/may/27/science-on-memory-unsafet... [2]. https://linuxsecurity.com/news/government/nsa-s-plea-stop-us...
I think the risks of a rewrite - especially when using AI - are far more problematic than memory safety. In the long run those C projects will be memory safe in the next five years using memory safe C implementations.