How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows 7

Written by Alan Sunday, 28 November 2010 08:00

First, let me get this out of the way.  I’ll let Wikipedia explain what a MAC address is.

A Media Access Control address (MAC 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. Logically, MAC addresses are used in the Media Access Control protocol sub-layer of the OSI reference model.

 

MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network interface card (NIC) and are stored in its hardware, the card’s read-only memory, or some other firmware mechanism. If assigned by the manufacturer, a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer’s registered identification number and may be referred to as the burned-in address. It may also be known as an Ethernet hardware address (EHA), hardware address or physical address.

It may sound geeky, but it’s really not that complicated.  Think of it as a unique serial number for a web device.  In an operating system, the MAC address is often represented as a 12-digit hexadecimal number. For example, 1A-2B-3C-4D-5E-6F.

There are many reasons a user may want to bypass, or spoof, a MAC address.  For example to bypass MAC filtering on a firewall or router.  It is commonly used for hacker purposes such as ARP poisoning, but it can occur in the course of legitimate ARP transactions.  And, it can be used by people with reasons for wanting to not be detected and logged, such those trying to get information out of totalitarian regimes like Iran and China.

Now that we know something about this, let’s look at how to do it.

1. Click Start and in the search box type ncpa.cpl and hit Enter.  Alternately, you can click Start => Control Panel => Network and Internet => Network and Sharing Center and in the left column click Change Adapter Settings.

network connections1 How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows 7

2. Click on your connection (in this case it’s Local Area Connection) to highlight it.  A new menu will appear at the top of the screen.  In that menu choose Change settings of this connection.

change settings How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows 7

3. Click Configure and then click the Advanced tab and highlight Network Address.

network address How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows 7

4. By default the Not Present radio button is clicked.  Click the button for Value and enter a new MAC address – this consists of 6 pairs of numbers and letter such as 13-17-L8-23-J2-0K.  Click OK when you are done.

5. To restore your default MAC address simply repeat these steps and change the radio button back to Not Present.

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 How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows 7

Alan

Alan is the owner and editor of Making Windows Easy. In addition to writing about technology he is also an avid distance runner and hiker. Read More

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8 Comments

  1. kirbalo   |  Tuesday, 27 September 2011 at 2:59 pm

    I would have thought that the “new MAC address – this consists of 6 pairs of numbers and letter such as 13-17-L8-23-J2-0K.” would need to actually be valid Hex numerals, not random letters from the alphabet??? Maybe I’m mistaken…

  2. Thaffy   |  Monday, 17 October 2011 at 5:26 pm

    Thnx alot, i tried with a wireless connection on my pc and now the network card doesent find connections….

  3. Thaffy   |  Tuesday, 18 October 2011 at 2:21 am

    Pls reply with help to my problem above

  4. sidis57   |  Sunday, 06 November 2011 at 7:01 am

    DEBUG INFO:

    Interface Realtek PCI GBE Family Controller (type Ethernet)

    NON-CONNECTED INTERFACE

    Interface Software Loopback Interface 1 (type Loopback)

    Interface adapter Microsoft ISATAP (type Tunnel)

    Interface Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface (type Tunnel)

    what i must to do…help me

  5. Marcostadeuuu   |  Friday, 11 November 2011 at 10:11 pm

    Thanks! ! !Very good.

  6. aaron   |  Sunday, 13 November 2011 at 5:15 pm

    when i get to change settings of this connection and i go to the advanced tab.. i only have 4 properties and network address is not there.. i need help!

  7. Alan   |  Sunday, 13 November 2011 at 5:24 pm

    Are you running as administrator?

  8. Web Development London UK   |  Friday, 20 January 2012 at 1:53 am

    Web Development London UK…

    [...]How To Change Or Spoof A MAC Address In Windows | Making Windows Easy – All Things Microsoft, Software, and the Web[...]…

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