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Simple trick (programming.dev)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Isn’t the MAC address fixed to the hardware? Am I growing old?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It still is if I'm correct but most operating systems have an option to spoof/randomize your MAC address

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Most modern smartphones will randomize the MAC address for privacy (on Bluetooth too irc). It really killed my crappy WiFi-based people tracker.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

It is, but there are ways to spoof it so your device presents a different one when connecting to a network.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not quite. I'm not really sure but I think the original idea actually was a fixed hardware address but I'm not sure if a lot of devices actually ever implemented it that way because it's simpler (and cheaper) to control it in software. In modern (especially mobile) devices it's actually a security requirement because with a fixed MAC address you could be tracked by other wifi devices.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

With the right software, you can do anything!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

As the others said that is normally the case but nowadays most computers and mobiles have an option that randomize the MAC addresses on each connection.

These MAC addresses are known as locally-administered address. They look like this:

x2:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
x6:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
xA:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
xE:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

And rarely like this:

x3‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx
x7‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx
xB‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx
xF‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx‑xx