Changing MAC address in OS X?

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daverdaver
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I'd like to know if it's possible to change my ethernet hardware address in OS X. A quick search of the internet didn't help at all.



Info much appreciated.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    As far as i know: this is completely and utterly impossible. This is, as you said it, a HARDWARE address, ingrained in production, and there to stay. The only thing you could try is throwing out the ethernet card (if such is at all feasible - depending on your comp, I guess).



    I'm pretty sure you couldn't even do this with a firmware upgrade (although these babies are quite potent sometimes -changing DVD player region code and such). Tough luck. Why do you want to do that anyway? I thought only stolen hardware would deserve such a treatment?
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  • Reply 2 of 7
    quaremquarem Posts: 254member
    You can spoof a MAC Adress but I'm not sure how to do it. Linksys routers have the ability to spoof a MAC adress on the WAN side, so you could connect your computer up to one of them and then spoof through the router.
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  • Reply 3 of 7
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    You can spoof the MAC address, but you will have to hack and recompile the kernel from the Darwin source. This WILL break a number of things.



    A guy over at MacNN tried this with limited success.
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  • Reply 4 of 7
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    Which, however, leaves open the question: why would one want to 'spoof' an MAC address??
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  • Reply 5 of 7
    daverdaver Posts: 496member
    Thanks for the responses, guys. Looks like I'll have to sort things out the hard way over here. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
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  • Reply 6 of 7
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    You can almost do it with ifconfig, but it causes a kernel panic. (Gee, it works fine in Linux...)
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  • Reply 7 of 7
    thinkdifferent1984thinkdifferent1984 Posts: 69member
    [quote]Originally posted by der Kopf:

    <strong>Which, however, leaves open the question: why would one want to 'spoof' an MAC address??</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Some cable providers and such send out IPs based on MAC addresses. Get a new MAC, get a new IP.
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