How to Spoof Your Airport MAC Address in Snow Leopard

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Posted February 12, 2010 at 11:41pm by iClarified

These are instructions on how to change or spoof your wireless adapter's MAC address in Snow Leopard.

A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to most network adapters or network interface cards.

Please note these instructions worked for us with a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. We cannot confirm that they will work for other operating systems or devices.

Step One
Launch Terminal from your Applications:Utilities folder.

How to Spoof Your Airport MAC Address in Snow Leopard

Step Two
Enter ifconfig en1 | grep ether to find the current MAC address for your wireless network adapter.

Step Three
Make sure your Airport is turned on and input the following into the Terminal window to disassociate from all networks.

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -z

When asked input your administrative password, do so.

Step Four
Input the following command to change your MAC address

sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55

Replace 00:11:22:33:44:55 with an address of your choice.

Step Five
To verify the change has completed successfully input ifconfig en1 | grep ether into the Terminal window.

*Please note that restarting your computer will revert the MAC address to its default value.

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Florent - April 4, 2010 at 12:06pm

It works fine under 10.6.3 By the way, the command " sudo ifconfig en1 down " + " sudo ifconfig en1 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx " now only works under 10.6.2. If you upgrade your MacOS X to 10.6.3 you'll get this message : ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR) Device power is off Of course, if you tried with airport switched up, you won't get this but the command won't have any effect. I've reported this issue.

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calsim - February 14, 2011 at 7:12pm

It seems to work fine under Mac OSX 10.6.6

onu - February 14, 2010 at 4:37pm

and "airport express" ?? how to spoof adress? pls

EvilPenguin - February 13, 2010 at 2:23am

Here is a binary for this: http://nakedproductions.us/Harddrive/MACaddy

Macsl21 - February 13, 2010 at 12:42am

This doesn't really work. This used to work in 10.5.x, but they fixed/broke this in 10.6.x. What happens is it all appears to work, just as your screenshots show, but...you'll be unable to log into a wifi network that requires a password. If you go to Preferences->Network, you'll see if you click on your Airport icon and the Advanced button that it will show your old MAC address. Somehow the MAC address is being changed only in one of two locations. It's the changing of the second location that apparently nobody has been able to figure out and which would allow us to change our MAC address for any practical use. If anyone has any ideas, please post and I'll test.

gmcd2200 - April 6, 2010 at 11:37pm

random mac addr code below. ####################################### #!/bin/ksh # # Written by Graeme Mc Donough # Copy and manipulate this .. but give me credit. for the code thanks. # Version 1.0 16-04-2010 # # # This script is called "rand_mac.ksh" # # # This script is free.. enjoy.. # This script was written to work with Mac Osx 10.6 # Mac OSX 10.6 ksh has a bug.. so I added a work around in the script. # # Assumptions # * you have put in a link for the airport to /usr/sbin # * you will run this script with "sudo ./rand_mac.ksh" # * You will know how to use vi.. I am a unix person.. not a pico person.. so don't ask me # # NOTES # * I found a way to make the Airport auto lock back on to your fav wireless # just un-comment the 3 bottom lines. Note.. it may make the script not work well" # Go figure /shrug /usr/sbin/airport -z counter=0 GET_HEX () { if [[ ${VAR} -lt 10 ]] then HEX_VALUE=`echo ${VAR}` fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "10" ]] then HEX_VALUE=a fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "11" ]] then HEX_VALUE=b fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "12" ]] then HEX_VALUE=c fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "13" ]] then HEX_VALUE=d fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "14" ]] then HEX_VALUE=e fi if [[ ${VAR} -eq "15" ]] then HEX_VALUE=f fi # echo "${HEX_VALUE}" } for i in {1..6}} do VAR=$((RANDOM%15)) GET_HEX FULL_HEX=`echo ${FULL_HEX}${HEX_VALUE}` VAR=$((RANDOM%15)) GET_HEX FIX_I=`echo ${i} | awk -F\} '{print $1}'` #echo $FIX_I if [ ${FIX_I} -eq 6 ] then FULL_HEX=`echo ${FULL_HEX}${HEX_VALUE}` else FULL_HEX=`echo ${FULL_HEX}${HEX_VALUE}:` fi done echo "The new randomised Mac Addr = ${FULL_HEX}" echo "Attempting to change en0 to the New Mac Addr it does not work all the time." echo " the first thing we do is wait... aournd 20 seconds ... boooring" sleep 25 ifconfig en0 ether ${FULL_HEX} echo "The (hopefully changed to tbe the same) mac addr for en0 = ${VALUE}" echo "if not .. run this again.. .. it will eventually work" #ifconfig en0 down #sleep 3 #ifconfig en0 up ######################################

Robert - May 1, 2010 at 5:11pm

I was thinking on changing the files related to airport setup in terminal for airport - anyone try this... I found them once, but can't remember where they are located.

helix - August 5, 2010 at 10:14pm

This works fine for me on 10.6.4. I'm using it to spoof my MAC address so I can get on Clearwires 4G network with my Macbook Pro even through I'm using an iSpot and the 25.00 dollar a month "i" only service plan... This is Frickin great

Luca G. - July 10, 2011 at 12:26pm

You must disassociate before trying to change the Mac address. The key is to run: airport -z I posted full instructions some time ago on my blog: http://www.nervous.it/lang/en-us/2009/12/mac-spoofing-on-snow-leopard/