MAC address spoofing in OS X

Written by Johan, published at June 17, 2019, 5:35 p.m.

MAC address spoofing is a method to change the hardware address of a Network Interface Controller (NIC).
A MAC address is only exposed to the LAN segment and is never visible for users outside of your local network, but users on your LAN can see your MAC address, and by using tools like netlookup.se, MAC addresses can be traced back to a specific manufacturer.
In some cases, you might want not to tell the devices on your LAN what kind of hardware you are running, or maybe your MAC address has been blocked by the gateway.
Use the following steps to change your MAC address. To change the MAC address, you need to be the administrator of the system.

Step 1 - Find your NIC

Open the "Terminal" application by using Spotlight Search (looking glass in top right corner).
Type ifconfig and press enter.
A list of all NICs on the computer are shown. Determine what interface you are going to use. en0 is typically your main network interface in OS X.

Step 2 - Change your MAC address

In the "Terminal" application, type the following.

sudo ifconfig en0 ether 30:e3:d6:01:d2:f1

Change the MAC address after ether to the MAC address you want to change to.
After you press enter, you will be prompted with a password, enter your user password to gain administrative privileges.
The new MAC address will be used until the next reboot.

Make sure that you do not use the same MAC address that someone else is using on the LAN, in that case, the network will have a hard time to determine where the traffic should be sent.

See all articles - Find the vendor for a given MAC address

MAC address spoofing in OS X

Step 1 - Find your NIC

Step 2 - Change your MAC address

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