MS Windows: On Microsoft Windows systems, the MAC address is stored in a registry key.If you give it a MAC address argument of “0”, it will even generate a random MAC address for you.įor more general MAC address spoofing, your MAC address is trivially reset with tools available in default installs of most operating systems. You can spoof a MAC address when using Nmap with nothing more than a -spoof-mac command line option for Nmap itself to hide the true source of Nmap probes. This can be done with a plethora of freely available security tools, including Nmap. People seem to think “Oh, well, sure a determined attacker can get past it, but not anyone else.” It doesn’t take much determination at all to spoof a MAC address. Since that lowest-hanging fruit consists of the majority of wireless access points, MAC filtering can be of value as a way of turning away the majority of opportunistic attackers.ĭon’t rely on MAC filtering alone, however. Its resource consumption is almost unmeasurable, and even if it doesn’t keep out any reasonably knowledgeable security crackers willing to spend a few moments gaining access, it does keep out a lot of automated opportunistic attacks that are aiming solely for the absolute lowest-hanging fruit on the security tree. This doesn’t mean MAC filtering is useless.
Anyone who pays any attention to current trends in wireless security at all should know that MAC filtering is less effective than WEP - and that WEP can be cracked almost instantly these days with commonly available tools. MAC address filtering for wireless networking isn’t real “security”.