techrecovery | Stop blocking ping already! (Reply)

I don't care that you just read a column by *insert techno weenie* saying otherwise, ICMP Echo Request packets are not a security risk. Especially on the fscking LAN! Firewalling off ping only serves to annoy your sysadmin when he needs to do a quick check of network connectivity.

# ping 192.168.0.7
PING 192.168.0.7 (192.168.0.7) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 192.168.0.7 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2008ms

Its not that we don't have tools to do it anyway, its just that they only work from another machine on your subnet:

# arping 192.168.0.7
ARPING 192.168.0.7 from 192.168.0.35 eth0
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.7 [00:20:E0:6B:9C:F7]  0.745ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.7 [00:20:E0:6B:9C:F7]  0.751ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.7 [00:20:E0:6B:9C:F7]  0.738ms
Sent 3 probes (1 broadcast(s))
Received 3 response(s)

On a side note, try arping 192.168.0.1 or other common router IP from the box hooked up to your cable/dsl modem sometime, its fun :)