How to Spoof Mac Address in Computer Using Windows 7/8/10-Linux
Spoofing? Did you hear about this earlier? Not yet ? Don’t worry in this tutorial i will be discussing about the Spoofing Technique. Spoofing in short to fool something, it can be MAC spoofing,IP spoofing, Email spoofing, SMS spoofing etc. In networking, this term is used to describe a variety of ways in which hardware and software can be fooled. In this post i am talking about spoofing Mac Address.
Do You Know?ARP Spoofing is a technique such as a hacker) could use to redirect traffic from a computer through the hacker’s computer and then to the internet. This allows the hacker to then read all traffic sent from or to the first computer. This will reveal passwords, credit card numbers, and other private information.A symptom of this sort of attack is a window when browsing to a secure site that says something along the lines of “This website’s authentication check has failed”. This means that the hacker has forged a secure connection that cannot be verified. So, the warning is presented.
This post comprises of following things:
- What is MAC Address
- How to Check your MAC Address
- What is the need to spoof MAC Address
- Ways to spoof Mac Address using Linux/Windows
What is a MAC Address?
A Media Access Control-(MAC in short) address is a number that identifies the network adapter(s) installed on your computer. The address is composed of up to 6 pairs of characters, separated by colons. You may need to provide your MAC address to a router in order to successfully connect to a network.
Example of MAC Address
Media Access Control in short MAC is a number that identifies your network adapter or adapters for connecting to the internet. To remain highly anonymous you should first of all change your mac addressspoof mac address. Although it may not be the most important thing to do but surely it is one of the steps which you need to do to climb the ladder of anonymity.
How to check your MAC Address in Windows 7/8/8.1/10?
#1 Open Control Panel (from the Start menu on Windows 7 or from the list of Start Apps on Windows 8/8.1).
#2 Open the Network and Sharing Center section within Control Panel.
#3 In the “View your active networks” section of the screen, click the blue link corresponding to the connection of interest. Alternatively, click the “Change adapter settings” left-hand menu link and then right-click the icon corresponding to the connection of interest. In either case, a pop-up window appears displaying basic Status for that connection.
#4 Click the “Details” button. A “Network Connection Details” window appears that lists Physical Address, IP addresses and other parameters
Need to Change/Spoof Mac Address
#1 Remain Anonymous
#2 Bypass Mac Filters
#3 Mac Authentication
#1 Remain Anonymous : The first and the foremost thing by spoofing your mac address is for the purpose of anonymity. Your mac address can be seen by any person on your local area network (LAN) or for that matter if you are connected to a WiFi network any person can see your mac address by just running a simple scan either from windows or Linux. A simple example of this is to just use the command from Linux as
airodump-ng mon0 (mon0 = your wifi interface)
The BSSID’s listed above refer’s to the mac addresses for various networks available in your range. By just running a simple scan we can find out the various BSSID’s available. Hackers may tried to exploit your network if they found out your mac address and can use the internet as being “you” That’s why you need to change your MAC address.
#2 Bypassing MAC Filters: If you ever need to connect to an open WiFi network for the purpose of remaining anonymous but things didn’t turned out pretty well, may be the WiFi owner is using a MAC filter. MAC filter means only allowing those users to connect which have a specific MAC address. By changing your MAC address to that specific address which is connected you can connect to a network but first by de authenticating the current user.
#3 MAC Authentication: Some ISP (Internet Service Provide) may only allow you to connect to a MAC address if you have a specific address. So changing your address always helps in this case.
How to change your MAC Address in Windows 7/8/10
#Smac ( For Windows) : It is a powerful MAC changer that has been around for years. It is easy to use with any hardware. You do need to be an “expert” to use this. It completely spoofs your Mac address. Instead of using Smac there are many software’s available which you can use to change your computer’s mac address and so on remain anonymous online.
How to change your MAC Address in Linux:
#Mac Changer (Linux) : Mac-changer is a free available tool which is used for changing the Mac address in a Linux machine. What you need to do is select your internet interface and run the command and its pretty much done.
The above screenshot is taken from Backtrack and it is freely available in Backtrack and many other higher versions. If you are using a lower version of Linux prefer downloading it or by using the following command in console
sudo apt-get install macchanger macchanger-gtk