What is macchanger

Macchanger is a little program that helps you fake (sometimes called spoof) your mac address.

Using ifconfig and macchanger

The usage is really simple.

First, if you don’t hace macchanger, install it:

$ apt-get install macchanger

Then find your mac address:

$ ifconfig
...
information about interfaces

eth0: ....
	ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

lo: ....

wlan0: ...
	ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
...

What you need to see is the eth0 interface and wlan0 (sometimes eth1, or some other. You need to figure it out yourself). eth0 is the ethernet (wired)interface, and wlan0 is wireless LAN interface.

So if you are using a wired connection, you need to care about eth0. You need to care about wlan0 if you are using a wireless connection.

If you are still worried, just change mac addresses of both interfaces.

Then you get your network interface turned off, for example:

# ifconfig wlan0 down

You are going to see that your wireless(or wired) connection is gone on your taskbar, for example. If you are still unsure, check by using ifconfig again, and the interface you turned off won’t be shown anymore.

and use macchanger to generate a new mac address (there are many options. Just do macchanger -h or man macchanger to check it out):

# macchanger -r wlan0
macchanger -r wlan0
Current MAC:   12:34:56:78:90:ab (The name of your vendor)
Permanent MAC: 12:34:56:78:90:ab (The name of your vendor)     
New MAC:       34:a1:f3:ds:12:39 (unknown)

Now turn the interface on again:

# ifconfig wlan0 up

Now there you go. Your mac address is temporarily changed.

One problem I faced

Everything went well, but I needed to restart my wifi even after ifconfig wlan0 up because the connection was not established. I searched on the web and found an answer to this.

This solution works perfectly for me:

sudo service network-manager stop
sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo macchanger -m XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX wlan0
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo service network-manager start

This way, you do not have to manually restart wifi after ifconfig wlan0 up.

Warning

The fake mac address will be reset to the original mac address if you choose to connect to another wifi or restart the interface. Now, there is a solution to spoof the mac address every time the machine wakes up.

See spoofing the mac address semi-permanently.

Bonus: Changing mac address without macchanger

really easy. Just enter the following commands sequentially:

/etc/init.d/networking stop
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 02:01:02:03:04:08
/etc/init.d/networking start 

Then, do ifconfig to check the mac address of eth0 interface. It should be 02:01:02:03:04:08.

Written by Joel Mun. Joel likes Rust, GoLang, Typescript, Wasm and more. He also loves to enlarge the boundaries of his knowledge, mainly by reading books and watching lectures on Youtube. Guitar and piano are necessities at his home.