USB Wireless Adapter Physical MAC Adress Change

[devsnake]

Is it possible to change the physical address of a wireless adapter? Make two adapters to have the same address?

Hello everyone, fresh to the forum, hoping to learn many things from here.

I've been researching ways to change the MAC Address of my D-Link USB Wireless adapter.

Macshift, SMAC, would change the values when I view the registries in Regedit. However,

when I do ipconfig/all in cmd, the Wireless Adapter's physical address remains to be the same no matter what I do...

On the other hand, the network card that came with my computer changes with ease...

I couldn't research deeply into changing physical address of wireless adapters, after alot of reading, some people stated

that any hardwares' physical address cannot be changed, while some say it is possible through linux OS or other methods

which are hard for me to understand... Anyone out there with answers to my questions? Have a good day everyone!

[Dwere134]

I don't mean this in an offensive way whatsoever... But here's the thing. If it is possible - I'm not even sure of it myself, though I think it's possible for the mac addresses to be duplicated by different hardware, accidentally, though I may be wrong... Anyway, I believe that if it WERE possible it would probably be a technique that required you to understand more about other aspects of computers first... I might be wrong though.

[devsnake]

So, no definite answer for -
"Is it possible to change the physical address of a wireless adapter? Make two adapters to have the same address?"

[Vulpine]

It is possible. In cases where a router may be employing MAC filtering, you can spoof multiple NICs to the same MAC for access from each node.

It sounds like you're having an issue with your USB NIC in particular though, right? If you're successfully spoofing the MAC, it should be reflected in ipconfig. You said that isn't happening, however. I would try googling that USB NIC for any information that you can dig up about MAC spoofing with that particular model.

[Goatboy]

I know there are quite a few utilities out there for both Windows and Linux that'll set your MAC to whatever you want. I think you might even be able to do it with iwconfig.

[thetan]

In linux:

Code: Select all

ifconfig [nic device here] down
ifconfig [nic device here] hw ether [new mac address here]
ifconfig [nic device here] up


In FreeBSD

Code: Select all

ifconfig [nic device here] down
ifconfig [nic device here] ether [new mac address here]
ifconfig [nic device here] up


In windows, depending on your version you can usually do it natively either through the registry or through the property tab on the device configuration, i might post a guide when i get to work today.

[devsnake]

Thank you all for your suggestions!

Looking back to my original post, thought that I did not elaborate enough about my situation...

The program that I am trying to bypass recognizes 1 MAC Address as a pass for the program to run.

I'm connected to the web with internal LAN card, and have D-link DWA-160 plugged in to the USB port.

(D-link DWA-160 is not meant for internet access but for the program, so it is disconnected.)

Since each one of them have unique MAC address, I can't use any others to run the program on different computers...

Thus here I am trying to fool the program by spoofing the MAC address of same model of other wireless adapter.

@Vulpine- I am connected to a router for internet access with internal LAN card.
If my wireless adapter isn't connected, is it still effected by MAC filtering?

@Goatboy- I managed to find few utilities for windows (the program is supported in Windows OS only) and played with it , but no luck... I might install linux just to see if I can manage to change the MAC address on there.
By the way, should those utilities for linux work fine on ubuntu? I've only used Windows OS up until now...

@thetan- Going to definitely going to try those commands when I finish installing linux. As for editing the registry, I did input the value on NetworkAdress registry for the D-link DWA-160. It shows that it is changed, but ipconfig/all does not agree...

All your help is very appreciated...Hopefully there's a solution to this... Thank you all!

[fashizzlepop]

MAC filtering is only used if you are connecting wirelessly.

[Vulpine]

MAC filtering is only used if you are connecting wirelessly.

You can filter wired connections by MAC. There just aren't too many routers out there that include the feature.

[fashizzlepop]

True but why worry? I would just have a gun aimed at the router so no dbag could plug in their ethernet.