Varma’s back with – “MAC for little Masters (contd…)”

MAC for Little Masters (contd....)

As I promised to my readers last Sunday, I am BACK with MAC.

If you are a newbie, I will suggest you to please go through my earlier post which was posted on 8^th April, 2012, just to have a sound background on the basics of MAC, but, if you are comfortable, its cool….:-) 

Well,

Last time we saw,

-> What are MAC addresses?

-> How can we get our MAC addresses?

-> Why should we change our MAC addresses?

and few more things.....am I right OR am I right….;-)

But today, we are going to try something advanced.

Finally the time has come when we will apply the theoretical concepts of MAC in our practical life.

  -  Parth Varma (Tech Nuske Team)

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First of all I would like to show you, how can you change your MAC address:

But REMEMBER:

Procedure of changing MAC address is different for different operating system, so make sure which one you have (XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server, Linux, Windows 7 or any other)

If you have XP, Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003, the procedure is below:

a.   Go to Start-> Control Panel -> Network and Internet Connections -> and double click on Network Connections.

b.   Right click on the active network connection with network adapter that you want to change the MAC address (normally Local Area Network or Wireless Network Connection) and click on Properties.  

c.   Under “General” tab, click on the “Configure” button

d.   Click on “Advanced” tab

e.   Under “Property section”, you should see an item called “Network Address” or "Locally Administered Address", click on it.

f.   On the right side, under “Value”, type in the New MAC address you want to assign to your NIC.  Usually this value is entered without the “-“ between the MAC address numbers.

 g.   Goto command prompt and type in “ipconfig /all” or “net config rdr” to verify the changes.

h.   Reboot the computer if successful to make the change effective.

Note: To restore or reset back to original default MAC address, simply set back the option to “Not Present”. 

If you have Windows 7 like OS, the procedure is below:

a. Goto command prompt and type “ipconfig /all”, and 

     I. Record the Description for the NIC you want to change. 
   II. Record the Physical Address for the NIC you want to change.  Physical Address is the MAC Address

 

 b. Goto command prompt and type “net config rdr”, and you should see something like

       

c.  Remember the number inside { }.  For example, in the above “net config rdr” output, for MAC address “00C095ECB793,” you should remember {1C9324AD-ADB7-4920-B02D-AB281838637A}.  Use print Screen and take the snapshot, that’s the easiest way.

d.  Go to Start -> Run, type “regedt32” to start registry editor.  Do not use “Regedit.”

e.  Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.  Double click on it to expand the tree.  The subkeys are 4-digit numbers, which represent particular network adapters.  You should see it starts with 0000, then 0001, 0002, 0003 and so on.  (See figure below)

g.  Go through each subkey that starts with 0000.  Click on 0000, check DriverDesc keyword on the right to see if that's the NIC you want to change the MAC address.  The DriveDesc should match the Description you recorded from step (a.-I.).  If you are not 100% sure about the DriverDesc, then you can verify by checking if the NetCfgInstanceID keyword value matches from step (c).
If there is no match, then move on to 0001, 0002, 0003, and so on, until you find the one you want.  Usually 0000 contains the first NIC you installed on the computer.

h.  Once you selected the subkey (i.e. 0000), check if there is a keyword "NetworkAddress" exist in the right side of the window. 

    I.  If "NetworkAddress" keyword does not exist, then create this new keyword:

         i. Click on the drop down menu “Edit -> Add Value”.

        ii.  In the Add Value window, enter the following value then click OK.  

                Value Name: = NetworkAddress
            Data Type: = REG_SZ 

                                        OR

Select New -> String Value. Name the new value name as NetworkAddress.

The double click on NetworkAddress and enter a new MAC address as its value data.

         iii.  String Editor window will pop up at this time.

          iv.  Enter the new MAC address you want to modify.  Then click OK.
          (There should not be any "-" in this address.  Your entry should  

               only consist of 12 digits as seen in the figure below)

  II. If "NetworkAddress" keyword exists, make sure it shows the keyword type is REG_SZ, and it should show as NetworkAddress:REG_SZ. This keyword might not have a value at this time.  

        i. Double click on the keyword NetworkAddress and the String Editor 

           window will pop up. 

        ii.  Enter the new MAC address you want to modify. Then click OK.
        (There should not be any "-" in this address.  Your entry should only 

             consist of 12 digits as seen in the figure above)

i. Reboot the system to make the new MAC address effective. Alternatively, if you don’t want to restart the system, try to disable and then re-enable the network adapter in Device Manager.

j. To verify the change of MAC address, go to command prompt, then type in one of the following commands: 

ipconfig /all
net config rdr

Note: To restore or reset back to true original hardware burned-in MAC address, remove the NetworkAddress registry key that is been added.

  

Restore The TRUE Hardware burned-in MAC Address:

a. Remove the entry you added:

                                     I. If you followed Method 1, then go back to the advanced 

                                 properties window and remove the entry you add.

                                    II. If you followed Method 2, then remove the "NetworkAddress" 

                                  keyword you added in the registry.

           

If you have Linux like OS, the procedure is below:

First find the physical MAC address of your machine by running the following command :

$ ifconfig -a | grep HWaddr

eth0  Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:48:BA:d1:20

Next, login as root in Linux and enter the following commands -

# ifconfig eth0 down

# ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:80:48:BA:d1:30

# ifconfig eth0 up

# ifconfig eth0 | grep HWaddr

I have changed the MAC address to a different number highlighted in blue. 00:80:48:BA:d1:30 is the new MAC address I have provided for my Linux machine. You can choose any 48 bits hexadecimal address as your MAC address.

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If you remember, I told you last week that I will tell you the names of people who wrote their name in history with MAC addresses, and what they did?

Well as you know I never break promises, here I go.... 

Talking about MAC addresses and people associated with it reminds me a man, no no no.....reminds me a young man who did something for which he is remembered even today..... 

The name of that young man was Aaron Swartz.

Mr. Swartz, a well-known figure in Internet academic circles, created a site called Infogami that later merged with the social news site Reddit. He is also a founder and director of the nonprofit group Demand Progress, which calls itself a political action group hoping to change public policy that relates to the Internet.

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, was indicted in Boston on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers.

In a press release, Ms. Ortiz’s office said that Mr. Swartz broke into a restricted area of M.I.T. and entered a computer wiring closet. Mr. Swartz apparently then accessed the M.I.T. computer network and took millions of documents from JSTOR.

In 2009 Mr. Swartz downloaded 19 million pages of federal court documents from a government database system, acting on the belief that they should be made available free.

The charges filed against Mr. Swartz include wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer and criminal forfeiture.

If convicted, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Dont be afraid, I am not telling you to go to that extent....lol.

I Hope you liked my todays post, to be very frank, I think I can write a little more on MAC, probably. But as I said before, I THINK, I am not sure. Because of this reason I will not say that the Discussion on MAC is over, if I get something new on MAC I will come back with some new and interesting stuffs on MAC.

You know when to catch me.

So see you next Sunday,  i.e. 22nd April, 2012

Till then take care and make it a nice day.....see you soon.

Regards,

Parth Anil Varma

(Tech Nuske)