From the thumbnail, most of us were probably thinking of Apple Macbook. In this blog, MAC stands for Media Access Control.
MAC Address is a unique, physical address assigned to a device by its manufacturers. It means MAC Address cannot be the same for multiple devices.
In a network, devices can recognize and connect through their MAC Addresses by sending out broadcast messages (by the source MAC Address) and receiving broadcast messages (by the destination MAC Address).
MAC Address is a 48-bit Address that is a string of six octets. The octets shown from left to right each octet of the address displayed as two hexadecimal digits followed by a colon. The first three Octets identify the organization that issued the identifier.
It is known as Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI). The second three Octets identify as Unique NIC (Network Interface Card).
A MAC Address is of the form:
00: 90 : 69: 9d : ae : 46
Where 00: 90: 69 is the OUI
And 9d: ae: 46 identifies the device’s NIC.
Now, why change your MAC Address?
- Anonymity: Changing your MAC Address can make you anonymous on a network.
- Privileged Access: Changing your MAC Address can give you certain privileges that you might not be able to get in general. An example is a Network that uses a Whitelist. Changing your MAC address to Whitelist can grant you access to that network.
- Security: Changing your MAC Address can help you stay anonymous from the attackers in some cases. Especially when connecting to an unknown network that you’re not entirely sure of (Which is highly discouraged).
Experienced Linux users know they can change MAC addresses from the terminal with OS Commands. You can change your MAC Address by running these commands.
- Ifconfig ( to see all available interfaces and know which you want to change).
- Ifconfig [interface to change its MAC Address] down.
- Ifconfig [interface to change its MAC Address] hw ether [New MAC Address].
- Ifconfig [interface to change its MAC Address] up.
Running those commands will change MAC Address for you. However, I intended to explain how to implement this using Python. You can run a Python script to change MAC address instead of using OS commands.
Python code to change your MAC Address on Linux here ??
NB: MAC Address is a Unique, Physical Address for each device. Physical means it’s permanent. So doing the above steps will change your MAC Address temporarily. When you restart your Computer, it goes back to its original state. Do not restart or turn off your system, If you wish to keep it a temporary MAC address.
Note: This content is for educational purposes. Do not use this information for criminal activity or on unauthorized systems.
