Sunday, November 14, 2010

MAC Spoofing

What is MAC address?

Each and every network device in this world have a unique MAC (Medium access control) address. A MAC address is a 6 byte address which is often displayed in XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX where each X is a hex digit like 00-1D-2F-BE-BA-01 or AE-01-AE-29-BE-0F.

In windows we can get the mac address by using ipconfig /all command or using getmac command. These commands will return you the mac address each NIC (network interface card) connected to the computer. E.g.



What is MAC Spoofing?

Changing of MAC address for making a node (computer or any device) get the identity of other node(desiguse) in the network is know as MAC spoofing. By changing the MAC address we spoof the network routing device like switch and router. Many switch and router provides a interface using which administrator can restrict the nodes in the network, typically called as MAC address filtering. Administrator can there define the MAC address of devices which are allowed to connect to the network and thus prevents conectivity of unidentified node to the network.



How to change a MAC address?

In windows we can change the MAC address using multiple ways.

Method1: Using network card configuration window. Goto Control Panel>Network Connections select the network right click on it select properties this will open up Network connection properties.
Now click on the configuration button this will open the NIC device (using which network is communicating) properties which can be also opened via device manager. Select the Advanced tab from the NIC device property window and select the "Network Address" from the property list and set its new value to any desired valid MAC address.










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