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Spoof Mac Address

The document provides instructions for retrieving, spoofing, and verifying a MAC address on a Mac computer. It explains how to use the ifconfig command to retrieve the current MAC address. It then demonstrates how to spoof the MAC address by using ifconfig with a new MAC address in hexadecimal format. Finally, it describes how to verify the spoofed address by checking ifconfig or the wireless router's attached devices list.

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Cruise Eastman
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
50 views

Spoof Mac Address

The document provides instructions for retrieving, spoofing, and verifying a MAC address on a Mac computer. It explains how to use the ifconfig command to retrieve the current MAC address. It then demonstrates how to spoof the MAC address by using ifconfig with a new MAC address in hexadecimal format. Finally, it describes how to verify the spoofed address by checking ifconfig or the wireless router's attached devices list.

Uploaded by

Cruise Eastman
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Retrieving your current MAC address

First, you’re going to want your current wireless MAC address so you can set it back without rebooting.
Launch the Terminal and type the following command:
ifconfig en1 | grep ether
You’ll know see something like:
ether 00:12:cb:c6:24:e2
And the values after ‘ether’ makeup your current MAC address. Write this down somewhere so you don’t
forget it. If you do, it’s not the end of the world, you’ll just have to reboot to reset it from a change.

Spoofing a MAC address


To spoof your MAC address, you simply set that value returned from ifconfig to another hex value in the
format of aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

For this example, we will set our wireless MAC address to 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6 by issuing the following
command:
sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6

The sudo command will require that you enter your root password to make the change.

Verifying the Spoofed MAC address worked


If you want to check that the spoof worked, type the same command as earlier:
ifconfig en1 | grep ether
Now you will see:
ether 00:e2:e3:e4:e5:e6
Meaning your MAC address is now the value you set it to. If you want to further verify the spoof, simply
login to your wireless router and look at the ‘available devices’ (or attached devices) list, and your spoofed
MAC address will be part of that list.

If you want to set your MAC address back to its real value, simply issue the above ifconfig commands with
the MAC address that you retrieved in step 1. You can also reboot your Mac.

Enjoy!

Note: Reader Dee Brown points out the following, which may help with some users having difficulties:
“running 10.5.6 you need to do the trick to disassociate from the network. ****DO NOT TURN AIRPORT
OFF****. What you will have to do is click your airport and click join network and enter some bogus name
as the network ssid. Then while it’s trying to connect click cancel.At this point you may spoof using the
sudo ifconfig en1 ether command”

other readers point out that Dee Brown’s trick works in 10.5.7 and above too. Thanks Dee!

Update: If you’re still having problems with MAC address spoofing in Leopard or Snow Leopard, the
above method still works but try disassociating with any wireless network BUT keep your wireless Airport
on (as mentioned above) – an easy way to do this is to type the following in the command line:

airport -z

Note that you have to have the ‘airport’ command setup to work for users, you can do that by copy and
pasting this command into the Mac Terminal:
sudo ln -s /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport
/usr/sbin/airport

Once disassociated from the network you should be able to spoof your MAC address as usual

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