Level 1

8 points

I need to change the MAC Address for Airport on MacBook

I have a specific need to change my son's Airport MAC address as his school requires the use of USB network cards that aren't compatible with MACs. These cards are needed because the school's router uses MAC address filtering.

Before we upgraded his Mac to Snow Leopard, we were able to change the MAC address to the MAC address of the useless dongal the school supplied. We basically created an AppleScript program that ran the "sudo ifconfig en1 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" and all was good.

This command no longer works for changing the MAC address. We tried it as root user as well and by typing it into the terminal window as root. After running the command, we can run "ifconfig en1" and it does display the new mac address but when we turn the airport on and try to connect, it just hangs and won't connect.

Our other non-Snow Leopard still works fine after running the commands so I'm guessing Apple disabled this functionality. It's hardly a security issue by being able to change your mac addres.

Is there a new way to accomplish this? I've searched everywhere.

Thanks!

Several Macs

Posted on Sep 15, 2009 5:51 PM

33 replies

Steve_O

Level 2

420 points

Sep 23, 2009 5:55 PM in response to Gamesta

{quote:title=Gamesta wrote:}
After I have broken the Airport by changing the MAC address, I can change it back to the hardware MAC address and it works again. So there must be some thing there.{quote}

So from this I take it you are not trying this at the university, correct? Obviously this conversation would be moot if you were able to connect to the university WLAN with the hardware MAC address.

If you are trying this at home with your own router, could it be that +your router+ has mac filtering enabled? I guess you have confirmed it doesn't, but thought I'd mention it anyway. Maybe could be a good idea to power cycle the router in case it is acting flakey. Maybe temporarily disable encryption, etc. and give it a go.

Sep 23, 2009 7:51 PM in response to Gamesta

I've been able to do it successfully with MacDaddy.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25729.

It only works when I do the disassociate from the network trick that's pointed out from the osxdaily.com article
"What you will have to do is click your airport and click join network and enter some bogus name as the network ssid. Then while it’s trying to connect click cancel.At this point you may spoof..”

Been successful at home and at work.

Steve_O

Level 2

420 points

Sep 23, 2009 8:05 PM in response to gaffield1997

gaffield1997 wrote:
I've been able to do it successfully with MacDaddy.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25729.

It only works when I do the disassociate from the network trick that's pointed out from the osxdaily.com article
"What you will have to do is click your airport and click join network and enter some bogus name as the network ssid. Then while it’s trying to connect click cancel.At this point you may spoof..”

Been successful at home and at work.

I haven't use this particular utility, but most of these types of programs are just GUI interfaces to a collection of shell scripts. If this is the case with this app (and I suspect it is though I couldn't find the release notes), then if manually entering the commands into the terminal doesn't work, neither will this application (since it is trying to do the exact same thing).

I mentioned earlier that this will not work if you are connected to a wireless network.

Steve_O

Level 2

420 points

Sep 24, 2009 12:48 AM in response to gaffield1997

I am saying that I doubt it would work for the OP. Obviously it works for you since you say you have used it at home and at work.

I just downloaded MacDaddyX and checked it out. As I expected it works for me.

It is still using ifconfig to make the MAC address change. The OP's problem is ifconfig does not seem to work on his hardware. This is why I say it would be unlikely to work for the OP. But I could be wrong, so he should give it a shot I guess.

9/24/09 4:42:06 PM authexec[1016] executing /sbin/ifconfig
9/24/09 4:42:07 PM kernel Auth result for: 00:00:00:00:00:00 MAC AUTH succeeded
9/24/09 4:42:07 PM kernel AirPort: Link Up on en1
9/24/09 4:42:07 PM kernel AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1
9/24/09 4:42:07 PM configd[13] network configuration changed.

Gamesta Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 24, 2009 2:25 AM in response to Steve_O

Steve_O wrote:

{quote:title=Gamesta wrote:}
After I have broken the Airport by changing the MAC address, I can change it back to the hardware MAC address and it works again. So there must be some thing there.{quote}

So from this I take it you are not trying this at the university, correct? Obviously this conversation would be moot if you were able to connect to the university WLAN with the hardware MAC address.

If you are trying this at home with your own router, could it be that +your router+ has mac filtering enabled? I guess you have confirmed it doesn't, but thought I'd mention it anyway. Maybe could be a good idea to power cycle the router in case it is acting flakey. Maybe temporarily disable encryption, etc. and give it a go.

My son's boarding school uses the MAC address filtering.

For my tests, I have turned off all filtering and even taken off wireless security so there is no password either. My test router is wide open. I've tried this at work and at home with no success. I am beginning to think it does have something to do with the Atheros version of the airport extreme.

I do believe their driver was not fully tested with snow leopard. Look at all of the other problems the older MacBooks and MacBook Pros have had since SL dropped. Turn this off... delete this...sudo that... You get the picture. Since Steve_O can connect and he has verified that he is not a dunce I must assume that Apple did not disable this feature for Sl and that there is some problem with the Atheos driver as the hardware used to work under old Leopard.

If we're lucky, Apple will make Atheros fix this. I'm pretty sure we're stuck until this is fixed. (Hopefully I'm wrong.) I'll definitely post something if something works in the future.

micp

Level 3

650 points

Sep 18, 2009 7:37 PM in response to Gamesta

there is spoofmac.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/80861

but I have not tried it with SL and am not at that machine right now to try.

micp

Level 3

650 points

Sep 21, 2009 2:58 PM in response to Gamesta

No luck with spoofmac either?

Gamesta Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 21, 2009 4:49 PM in response to micp

Oh. Spoofmac is no longer downloadable. I click your link and try to download and it takes me to a bogus site.

Igor_G5

Level 2

323 points

Sep 21, 2009 7:57 PM in response to Steve_O

On my pre-unibody MBP airport is also en1. Ethernet is en0.

Dogcow-Moof

Level 8

36,839 points

Sep 21, 2009 9:31 PM in response to Igor_G5

There were several posts a while back mentioning that Apple removed the ability to modify your MAC address from Mac OS X late in Leopard.

Gamesta Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 22, 2009 6:19 AM in response to bulk one

changemac is a no go. same results as if I had done it manually but I love the interafce. LoL

Thanks for the suggestion.

micp

Level 3

650 points

Sep 22, 2009 9:49 AM in response to Gamesta

http://download.cnet.com/SpoofMAC/3000-2094_4-80861.html?tag=mncol

I am at work right now behind a firewall and cannot test this link, does it work for you?

micp

Level 3

650 points

Sep 22, 2009 10:15 AM in response to Dogcow-Moof

Drat!

Sep 23, 2009 4:57 PM in response to Gamesta

I have the same MacBook Pro setup as Gamesta. I can't get Stev_O's method to work for me.

Jane Knox

Level 3

691 points

Sep 23, 2009 6:30 PM in response to Bryan Patrick

My Mac laptop shows the Airport at en0 on Snow Leopard

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I need to change the MAC Address for Airport on MacBook