14.12.2018

The Advent of Void: Day 14: macchanger

macchanger(1) is a tool that helps you setting a random but correct MAC address on a network interface.

MAC (Media Access Control) addresses are an unique identifier assigned to network interface controllers. They are used at the data link layer to address NICs in a network. Every NIC has a (pseudo-)unique address burned in. This makes it easy to recognize and identify your device if you connect to a network or even if your WiFi adapter is only scanning for networks. To secure a device from tracking you can change the mac address. Also changing the MAC address in high availability setups can be helpful: Taking over a MAC address from a crashed systems on the failover can reduce the downtime in some scenarios.

In both cases you can use macchanger to set new mac addresses on a NIC.

To show the current MAC address of eth0 run the following:

$ macchanger eth0 Current MAC: 18:5e:0f:31:7f:cc (unknown) Permanent MAC: 5a:68:a5:ca:cd:c3 (unknown)

To change the MAC address of the device to a completely random one add the -a flag:

$ macchanger -a eth0 Current MAC: 18:5e:0f:31:7f:cc (unknown) Permanent MAC: 5a:68:a5:ca:cd:c3 (unknown) New MAC: 00:21:d5:da:a4:bd (X2E GmbH)

To set a static MAC address on your device use the -m option:

$ macchanger -m 02:42:99:aa:48:47 eth0 Current MAC: 18:5e:0f:31:7f:cc (unknown) Permanent MAC: 5a:68:a5:ca:cd:c3 (unknown) New MAC: 00:21:d5:da:a4:bd (X2E GmbH)

For more information about macchanger please consider the manpage