How to Manually Change Your MAC Address and a Teeny, Tiny, Simple, Little Python Algorithm to Do It for You on Linux or Apple Operating Systems

Don’t worry Windows users, I throw a bone in here for y’all, as well 😉

What Is a MAC Address?

It’s kind of like a serial number, an example would look like this:

7g:ru:43:55:g7:23

The number is a series of six sets of alphanumeric pairs. It is associated with any network interface device used to access the internet. So, that would include a network card that is typically inside of a laptop, for example.

In What Situations Would Someone Want to Change a MAC Address?

Impersonate another machine/user to gain access to a secured network (this is typically naughty).
For personal security, this can help make your devices harder to track

Trivial and mundane tasks to which this could apply (but could make you hero of the office for the day) :

I got the points below from a Quora answer to the question “What are the risks of changing your device’s MAC address, will the risk still exist after it is changed back to its original?”:

If the configuration of other devices is dependent on the MAC address of a device you don’t have anymore. For example, Wi-Fi stations could be
locked on the MAC address of a broken AP, so you could copy
the MAC of the broken one onto it’s replacement
There could also be firewall rules or DHCP reservation tied to a MAC address, and if you replace the device it may be simpler to clone the
MAC of the old one than to change those rules
Another reason could be if your ISP keeps handing you the same IP address and you want a new one (maybe because you’re banned from the PlayStation Network). If you change the MAC address on your router it might trigger them to give you a new IP

While I typically find Quora answers to be too biased, this answer had some objective points worth sharing, at least in my humble opinion. However, I did disagree with their statement “It may be worth noting that you also don’t *gain* anything by changing MAC addresses.” Obviously, I don’t find this to be true, otherwise I wouldn’t be sharing any of this. Anyway, let’s carry on.

ifconfig

If you’re following along, this is the command we’ll be using most during this demonstration. Here’s the documentation for ifconfig

Nothing fancy, to use the command just open a terminal/shell/command line window, whatever you prefer calling it, and type ifconfig

It will display the MAC address of every network adapter to which your device is connected. For most laptops, that means just the built-in wireless card. However, if you have a USB wireless adapter plugged-in, or any other network interface device, you’ll see that MAC address, as well. Anyway, after you type ifconfig and press enter, then you should see an output like the screenshot below.

When looking at the output from ifconfig, the laptop’s internal wireless card is likely to be labeled as eth0 (or wlan0 if you’re using a USB wireless adapter), which is circled in red, above. Then look for the MAC address, which will be labeled ether. You can find that underlined above, as well. You might notice that my MAC address looks kind of generic, well that’s because I changed it to protect my privacy before taking the screenshot. I wrote down my original MAC address on a piece of paper before changing it though, so I could revert back to the original MAC in case I had any Wi-Fi connectivity issues. No issues though, so all was good. However, I do recommend writing this down, just in case.

For the Windows Users:

The equivalent of ifconfig for Windows is ipconfig /all. Just gotta change one measly letter, and then add the argument /all. Here’s the documentation for ipconfig.

Anyway, it’s not exactly the same. It is equivalent in the sense that it has the same functionality, but the output looks different. For example, MAC address will be referred to as “Physical Address.”

Furthermore, this command provides a lot more information than just the MAC address, as you can see in the screenshot above. Items in the left column have been redacted for my privacy.

ifconfig options

We’ll be using a couple of options from the list available for ifconfig.

ifconfig <interface> down we’ll type the name of the interface, in this case that will be eth0, according to the output shown in the first screenshot. down will turn off the internal wireless card (a.k.a. eth0) because we can’t change the MAC address without turning it off.
ifconfig <interface> hw ether <new_mac> Here is where we change the MAC. hw refers to hardware and ether refers to the MAC address and then just type a random MAC address number where it says <new_mac>
ifconfig <interface> up At this point, the MAC address has been changed and the wireless card needs to be turned back on. That’s what the up option does, but remember to specify the interface first, which is stilleth0.
Done. To double check that you successfully changed it, just type ifconfig. If you want to revert back to your original MAC address, follow the same three steps as above, but with your original MAC address that you remembered to write down before changing it.

Here’s a Teeny, Tiny, Simple, Little Python Algorithm

I called mine mac_changer.py


    #!usr/bin/env python
    import subprocess

    interface = input("Interface > ") ## use this for python3
    new_mac = input("new MAC > ") ## use this for python3
    
    #interface = raw_input("Interface > ") ## use this for python2
    #new_mac = raw_input("new MAC > ") ## use this for python2

    print("[+] Changing MAC address for " + interface + " with " + new_mac)

    subprocess.call(["ifconfig", interface, "down"])
    subprocess.call(["ifconfig", interface, "hw", "ether", new_mac])
    subprocess.call(["ifconfig", interface, "up"])

    '''subprocess is a python module that enables the calling of commands with
    predetermined arguments as needed for the required overall functionality'''

Check it out! Copy it, refactor it, make it your own! Give it to your grandma, I don’t give a f***! I feel that this is important to share. If you’re really cool, though, then you’ll refactor the code to make it work for Windows.

So, as you can see, this is a pretty basic algorithm but we can see how we’re using the subprocess module in tandem with ifconfig. Upon running the algorithm, it will ask for the user to input the interface’s name (this is eth0, in most cases) and the new MAC address you want to reassign it. Then it will change the MAC based on the user input.

There you go. You just got a little bit savvier with computers. I hope you enjoyed reading. Thanks for checking it out.

Thanks for reading!

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