crafterm's weblog

Ping requires root :)

Was browsing through the source code to the well known Ping utility last night (I know, I'm such a romantic aren't I :) ), and actually discovered that it requires root privileges because it creates an raw ICMP socket to send/receive  ECHO/ECHO_REQUEST packets.

This made me bring out the old Stevens and Comer books from University which had me reading for hours about sockets, protocols, RFC's, and not to mention looking at some lovely C code. It was quite a trip down memory lane when I was studying all this in 3rd year :)

For those who ever wanted to see how Ping works, here's the source!