MAC spoofing
Encyclopedia
MAC spoofing is a technique for changing a factory-assigned Media Access Control (MAC) address
of a network interface
on a networked device.
s on server
s or routers, either hiding a computer on a network or allowing it to impersonate another network device. A user may wish to legitimately spoof the MAC address of a previous hardware device in order to reacquire connectivity after hardware failure.
In 2011, Aaron Swartz
was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
; part of the indictment against him related to his alleged use of MAC spoofing to download articles from JSTOR
using the MIT network.
, where senders spoofing their address in a request direct the receiver into sending the response elsewhere, in MAC address spoofing the response is usually received by the spoofing party (special 'secure' switch configurations can prevent the reply from arriving, or the spoofed frame being transmitted at all). However, MAC address spoofing is limited to the local broadcast domain
.
MAC address
A Media Access Control address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network technologies and most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet...
of a network interface
Network interface
Network interface may refer to:* Network interface controller, the device a computer uses to connect to a computer network* Network interface device, a demarcation point for a telephone network...
on a networked device.
Motivation
The changing of the assigned MAC address may allow the bypassing of access control listAccess control list
An access control list , with respect to a computer file system, is a list of permissions attached to an object. An ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on given objects. Each entry in a typical ACL specifies a subject...
s on server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s or routers, either hiding a computer on a network or allowing it to impersonate another network device. A user may wish to legitimately spoof the MAC address of a previous hardware device in order to reacquire connectivity after hardware failure.
In 2011, Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz is an American programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS 1.0 specification...
was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law passed by the United States Congress in 1986, intended to reduce cracking of computer systems and to address federal computer-related offenses...
; part of the indictment against him related to his alleged use of MAC spoofing to download articles from JSTOR
JSTOR
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
using the MIT network.
Effect
Unlike IP address spoofingIP address spoofing
In computer networking, the term IP address spoofing or IP spoofing refers to the creation of Internet Protocol packets with a forged source IP address, called spoofing, with the purpose of concealing the identity of the sender or impersonating another computing system.-Background:The basic...
, where senders spoofing their address in a request direct the receiver into sending the response elsewhere, in MAC address spoofing the response is usually received by the spoofing party (special 'secure' switch configurations can prevent the reply from arriving, or the spoofed frame being transmitted at all). However, MAC address spoofing is limited to the local broadcast domain
Broadcast domain
A broadcast domain is a logical division of a computer network, in which all nodes can reach each other by broadcast at the data link layer. A broadcast domain can be within the same LAN segment or it can be bridged to other LAN segments....
.