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Friday, May 7, 2010

[TOOL] TMAC for Linux...

TMAC, a simple bash program, written for the purpose of changing the MAC address of Network Interface Card (NIC) in Linux based system, provided it has Bash environment.

This tool attempts to change the MAC address of Network Inteface Cards (NIC) in Linux systems by choosing a randomly-generated MAC address. The chosen MAC address is randomised in following way:
-It chooses it's first 3 octets needed for MAC address from a list of MAC vendors list provided from IEEE, which can be found here.
-The rest 3 octets are a set of complete randomly-generated hexadecimal numbers obtained with help of Psuedo-random-generator system variable.

All it needs is a Linux machine with BASH shell environment.

Looking at the subject, many people would have already been saying that "What the heck? Why do I need a MAC-address-changer for my linux? When I already have 'one-command-solution' for that. Its so simple...

user@localhost:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

See? It's done."

But, isn't that a pain, when you have to do the same thing everytime you login to your system?
The response I would expect is "What crap? All I need to do is - just put that command in $HOME/.bashrc. It's simple as that."

Now, what if, you want to randomize it each and everytime you login to your system?
"mmm... [:-/] "
And, what if, you are setting the MAC address of your NIC with some random hex-chars, whose vendor still to be born on the earth?
"mmm... [:-/] "

So, the purpose of making this tool, was to generate a random-MAC address from a KNOWN MAC-vendors list and assigning the same to specified device.
That is why, effectively, it needs 2 files to work. One, a text file containing a list of MAC-vendors, used "AS IS" from IEEE's website and other one, being the bash program.

Also, there can be a question like "Why, on the earth, do I ever need to change my MAC address?"
I would ask those ones with this question in mind to go through this link.

Well Google, anyway knows a lot about you and me.

Moreover, if you want to make this tool run each time you login and randomize your MAC address. I would suggest you, appending the command 'bash $PWD/tmac.sh -R ' in the '$HOME/.bashrc' file.

Well, for Windows users, as they already must be knowing about TMAC, Technitium MAC Address Changer. More info.

Download tmac-v1.0.tar.gz.

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