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German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

zdnet.com

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Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#2
I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this.

For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not.

Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#3

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

For one, it gives you a nice mac address you can use with "ifconfig wlan0 hw ether..." next time you go to a cybercafé in Europe

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#4

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

Yes, I think the fact that MAC addresses are often changeable, sometimes quite easily, is going to be an issue if this evidence is ever used in court.

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#6

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

I wonder about how a bunch of WAN interfaces being mac spoofed to replicate the evil MAC would be delt with?

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#7

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

> Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address

I might be mistaken, but don’t changed MAC addresses (at least using macchanger) persist only until the next reboot?

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#8

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

> Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address I might be mistaken, but don’t changed MAC addresses (at least using macchanger) persist only until the next reboot?

Any operating system worth its salt will save the changed address and reload it before/while bringing up the network drivers. It's often necessary to do this in order to connect to certain networks, so it'd be super annoying if you'd have to remember the address and type it in every time.

Re: German police ask for help in identifying a bomber's MAC address

#9

I wonder if there are any unintended consequences for this. For example, if you were able to identify the MAC address, and you were unethical, you could just blackmail the "bomber" - whether they are innocent or not. Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address so you could in theory use this to blackmail someone as well, or at least get them harassed by the police.

> Also, some devices allow you to reprogram the MAC address I might be mistaken, but don’t changed MAC addresses (at least using macchanger) persist only until the next reboot?

Any volatile setting that can be changed can be made to be persistent.
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