#macchanger - Spoofing your MAC Address#
This is going to be a really quick and simple tutorial. I’ve decided to post this because a while ago, I was having trouble using this program, so this is for anyone who’s having trouble using it right now.
The MAC Address (Media Access Control Address) is a unique identifier which identifies your computer in a network. There are numerous reasons why you would want to change/spoof you MAC Address. Just to name a few:
-
Privacy: This hides your machine’s manufacturer (i.e Asustek; Acer; etc…), which can appear when someone scans your network;
-
Bypass MAC Address filtering (Some networks limit acess based on MAC Addresses);
-
Allows you to “evade” Forensics (It’ll be more difficult to track you);
For this tutorial, I’ll be using macchanger
(This is a command line tool). If you’re more comfortable using a GUI tool, you can try macchanger-gtk
.
You can install either one by typing:
sudo apt-get install macchanger
or sudo apt-get install macchanger-gtk
, respectively.
Now we need to take down our network adapter in order to successfuly change our MAC Address, so once you finish the installation, write in the terminal (This step is vital, if you fail to do so, you won’t be able to change the MAC Address):
sudo ifconfig <network_interface> down
And to change the MAC Address type:
macchanger -r <network_interface>
The -r flag generates a random MAC Address. There are other flags that allow you to choose a MAC ADdress of your liking.
All we have to do now is bring our network adapter back up…
sudo ifconfig <network_interface> up
If you want to texplore the other options the program has to offer, simply type macchanger --help to see all flags and options available.
We reached the end of the tutorial. Hope you enjoyed reading it, and as always, feel free to comment below!