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Technically, it doesn't have to do with cPanel and this problem isn't unique to Linux. The growing trend on OS kernels is to use the NX or XD bit on the CPU FLAG register to mark data segments (including the stack) as non executable. According to my understanding, the ALS kernel takes this a bit further and won't even load software which doesn't try to enforce this protection scheme. This is a good idea, as the majority of operating system level hacks involves exploiting vulnerable software to place malicious code in a data segment (like the easy target: the stack) and executing it.

I wouldn't say that what these guys were doing gave the kernel a hard time. On the contrary, the kernel gave a hard time to third party libraries which run in server context (Zend extensions run with Apache process privileges, which could in theory be exploited for privilege escalation attacks). IMHO, the kernel did a good thing. The segfault isn't a real segfault (there was no segmentation fault), it is just an exception thrown when the library was trying to do something unsafe and the kernel did its best to protect its sorry arse from being exposed to it :D

Oh, man, you just reminded me of all those days I have spent messing around with 80x86 Assembly code back in the days and all the nasty crashes I caused to my poor 486DX2 machine :)