diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index ced3b5c044..eecf26c511 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -2,6 +2,12 @@ systemd System and Service Manager
 
 CHANGES WITH 243 in spe:
 
+        * Enable unprivileged programs, neither setuid nor having file
+          capabilities, to send ICMP Echo requests by turning on the
+          net.ipv4.ping_group_range parameter of the Linux kernel for all
+          groups. If this is not desirable, then it can be disabled by setting
+          the parameter to "1 0".
+
         * Previously, filters defined with SystemCallFilter= would have the
           effect that an calling an offending system call would terminate the
           calling thread. This behaviour never made much sense, since killing
diff --git a/sysctl.d/50-default.conf b/sysctl.d/50-default.conf
index 27084f6242..f0b4f610f8 100644
--- a/sysctl.d/50-default.conf
+++ b/sysctl.d/50-default.conf
@@ -30,6 +30,14 @@ net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
 # Promote secondary addresses when the primary address is removed
 net.ipv4.conf.all.promote_secondaries = 1
 
+# ping(8) without CAP_NET_ADMIN and CAP_NET_RAW
+# The upper limit is set to 2^31-1. Values greater than that get rejected by
+# the kernel because of this definition in linux/include/net/ping.h:
+#   #define GID_T_MAX (((gid_t)~0U) >> 1)
+# That's not so bad because values between 2^31 and 2^32-1 are reserved on
+# systemd-based systems anyway: https://systemd.io/UIDS-GIDS.html#summary
+net.ipv4.ping_group_range = 0 2147483647
+
 # Fair Queue CoDel packet scheduler to fight bufferbloat
 net.core.default_qdisc = fq_codel