mac address

[rob-IdUdaS/NwSyQrzRDRVclEQ at public.gmane.org (Rob Hasselbaum)]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:24 AM, j. daniel moylan <moylan at alioth> wrote:

>
> rob hasselbaum writes:
> > Bear in mind that it is easy to spoof MAC addresses, so this
> > doesn't offer much in the way of security if that is your
> > goal.
>
> hmmm -- how does the interloper find the right MAC address
> to spoof?
>
>
If your network is not protested by WPA, the attacker can simply watch the
traffic, which will show him the authorized MAC addresses. Then he can just
pick a machine to impersonate. If he's smart, he'll wait until the
authorized machine is idle so there's less chance of detection. Heck, he
could even impersonate the access point.

If the network is protected by WPA, but he somehow cracks it, he's already
scaled the mountain and MAC address filtering is merely a speedbump. ;-)