MAC address

Hey guys can any one tell me if we can change the mac address or not??

The real MAC addres of each network device is hard-coded on some rom chip on it, hower you can change the reported MAC to be whatever you want at the software level, if this is supported by your operating system (*nix systems and windows both support it)

Hey dwyane, you cannot change the MAC Address of the NIC for sure, but i guess i heard at some point of time that the firmware upgrade of some devices can lead to the change of the MAC address although i might be wrong on this because i have never seen that happenning.

But, yes as "nske" said you can always change both the reported IP Address & the reported MAC Address the former being called IP Address spoofing & the later ARP Spoofing.

Its used by hackers to perform what are called (Man In Middle ) MIM attacks in which you sit in between 2 computers & keep redirecting the packets destined for both the computers between them after you have the juice off them

hey guys.. can anyone explain whats this.... :
what i did was i went into the nic card by clickin on the 2 computer icon> properties > configure > advanced > locally administered address > value > change the value of the mac address....
and guys let me tell u this it works.. even if we restart the computer mac address remains the same we changed it to....
one of my friend connected a cisco switch and enabled a specific port to recognise his mac address, in other words computer with only the specified mac address will connect on that specified port,
i got his mac address changed it on my computer connected it to that port and i got connected...... waiting for response.....

Great, well, i never knew that. So, i guess you are using some of the operating system higher than WinXP or WinXP itself, because i never noticed any such option in any other OS'es

But then if it does allows you to change the MAC address that would mean that's a software change. When i say its a software change i mean is that when you unplug the LAN card from your computer & plug it into another computer you would again get the original MAC Address because thats what burnt into the computer.

Now, i understand that's one more security loophole built into the wonderfull windows operating system for us guys to exploit, instead of using any 3rd party software to spoof your MAC now windows provides you an option for that :lol:

But i guess the basic fact still remains that you can change it for spoofing thing but you cannot change it permanently.

followed your way, but could not arrive at the juncture where you can actually change the MAC address, what was your OS?