How to restore MAC address in Linux?

linux mac-address ifconfig spoofing

21,710

Solution 1

You can get your vendor-specified hardware MAC address using ethtool:

ethtool -P eth0

To reset the MAC address to this value, you can do something like:

sudo ifconfig eth0 hw ether $(ethtool -P eth0 | awk '{print $3}')

Solution 2

2021.05.25

The easiest is to use macchanger utility. It is available for every GNU/Linux distribution.

STEP 1: Disable the network interface you want to restore. Let's say eth0

# ip link set eth0 up

STEP 2: Restore MAC address using macchanger

# macchanger -p eth0

STEP 3: Enable the interface

# ip link set eth0 up

This is it!

Solution 3

[rooted] assuming wlan0

...(to find driver)
airmon-ng | awk '/wlan0/ {print $4}' ...or

airmon-ng | awk '/wlan0/ {print $3}' ...or just

airmon-ng ..and look under 'driver'

...(to restart driver)
ifconfig wlan0 down

modprobe -r rt2800usb <=Replace (rt2800usb) with your driver

modprobe rt2800usb <=Replace (rt2800usb) with your driver

ifconfig wlan0 up

This is how I do it. I made a script for this and use it with a couple of my programs. If that's the route you take, put a 'time.sleep(3)' {or whatever sleep command} before bringing the interface back up.

Solution 4

Assuming eth1:

grep "eth1" /var/log/*log | egrep "([0-9a-fA-F]{2}:){5}"

could find something in the logs {daemon,kern,syslog}.log on my system.

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21,710

narayanpatra

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

narayanpatra almost 2 years

I have changed my MAC address in my Linux machine using ifconfig. Now the problem is I have not saved my original MAC address. I want to restore it without rebooting.

Is there a way to do it?
- new123456 about 13 years
  
  Any reason no to reboot?
- narayanpatra about 13 years
  
  Running half a dozen applications. Dont want to close them.
- evan.bovie about 13 years
  
  Run this?: sudo ifdown interface && sudo ifup interface Or maybe: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
- narayanpatra about 13 years
  
  @emb : did not work.
narayanpatra about 13 years

can you elaborate the first method. The second one did not work.
evan.bovie about 13 years

The <NICmodule> would be what ever kernel module the NIC is using. e.g. e1000 You can see what you have with this guide.
sealz about 13 years

Do you know what module your network card uses? This will just remove the module and then put it back (hopefully with the right MAC)
paradd0x about 13 years

@narayanpatra Did you replace interface with what you use to access the internet? In most cases it's eth0
narayanpatra about 13 years

@thiago : Ya, i did that.