Re: Wireshark needs root privileges?

[Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws () gmail com>]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Despite warnings about running Wireshark as root, on my Ubuntu 9.10
> system the app sees no network interfaces unless I run it as root. Is
> this normal? I've googled for "Ubuntu wireshark" and it does seem that
> self-styled journalists (blogs) recommend running as root, but I do
> not trust them for best practices.

On most OS[1] you need "root" (or similar) privileges in order to open 
the network device in a manner that allows you to capture packets. 
Running Wireshark (the GUI) as root is strongly discouraged: since 1.0 
Wireshark has had a separate utility (dumpcap) that contains all the 
packet capture code: only that utility needs to run as root, allowing 
you to run the multiple million lines of code in the bulk of Wireshark 
as a normal user.

[1] BSD derived systems allow you to change the permissions of the 
devices in such a manner that non-root users can capture on them.


See: http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/CapturePrivileges

for more info.
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