Mysterious MAC address showing up (is my Mac being hacked?)

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Level 1

1 points

Mysterious MAC address showing up (is my Mac being hacked?)

I just installed a nifty free app called 'IP Scanner'. To my surprise when I started it, I saw that two local users with my correct username are detected in 'disovered users & devices'. One of the IP addresses is the one that I have manually assigned via System Preferences > network but the other is 192.168.60.1 and I don't know where it comes from (except that it is one of the IANA-RESERVED for use as a private address space). When I look at the MAC address of the device corresponding to this IP, I see that it is 00:50:56:c0:00:08. This doesn't correspond to the MAC address I find when I go to 'About this MAC'.

Does anybody know what is going on? Am I being hacked or is there something rather obvious I'm not aware of?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Josep M.

iMac 27" Core i7, Mac OS X (10.6.4), And loving it! I don't know how I have been computing all these years without a Mac

Posted on Sep 7, 2010 3:19 AM

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Answer 1

Meherally

Level 4

1,129 points

Sep 7, 2010 3:44 AM in response to jfontana

Hi Jf, yes that is a very nice app. I use it a lot. I get about 4 local user (name) each with a different ip. I use parallels. This is nothing to worry about as various ports are scanned and they register in the scan. and yes the .1 is router for sure.

It is great for screen sharing when you have DHCP on the network.

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Answer 2

jfontana Author

Level 1

1 points

Sep 17, 2010 9:42 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks a lot to everybody that responded. My apologies for not having answered before. I'm new to this forums and I didn't know how they worked. In most forums where I post messages, I get an e-mail message when somebody answers my posting. I didn't get any message and I thought my message got no answers.

The right answer must be that the mysterious IP came from VMWare Fusion (great virtual machine, by the way!). I'm certain it is not my router because my router's IP is 192.168.1.1. So, as Barney-15A suggested, the mysterious device is indeed a VMWare fusion.

I didn't know that virtual machines had MAC addresses too. I thought MAC addresses were only associated to physical or non-virtual devices. Live and learn.

Josep M.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,252 points

Sep 17, 2010 2:44 PM in response to jfontana

You can subscribe to threads to be notified when it is updated. You can also click on My Settings in the right side bar and select the option to always subscribe to topics you create.

Thanks for the feedback.

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