I want to build a MAC address spoofer that spits out a randomize mac address everytime my computer boots up. My question is how and from where do all my computer programs in linux pull up my MAC address. I know that my wi-fi network driver is responsible for telling my network card what to send, but from where does that driver get my MAC address? I also know that a MAC address is called a hardware address, however since it is possible to spoof MAC addresses, then it must only mean that the MAC address on my network card doesn’t have to be used when sending information. I would like to know how this can be done as well.
Also when randomizing my MAC address this ought to work with all other programs such as my web-browser and whatever else that I use, which shouldn’t be a problem since thats really an application layer … not link layer
Thanks
The MAC address is usually stored in some kind of EEPROM on the network card. This address is read during initialization by the network adapter driver and used by the MAC layer when assembling/sending netowrk packets.
The MAC address used can be changed on the command line using “ifconfig” via the “hw” option:
ifconfig essentially uses the SIOCSIFHWADDR ioctl (see http://linux.die.net/man/7/netdevice) to set the MAC address.
In some cases it might even be possible to change the MAC address stored on the network adapter itself, see http://linux.die.net/man/8/ethtool – but I wouldn’t recommend doing that.