[LINK] Introducing geoloc

Rik Harris rik at kawaja.net
Tue Jan 18 11:03:17 AEDT 2011


On 17/01/2011 9:25 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:
> At 0:29 +1100 31/12/10, Jon Seymour wrote:
>> A few days ago, I posted about the pervasive nature of WiFi MAC-based
>> location fixing services and ruminated on the very real dangers these
>> services present to individuals privacy.
> Valuable thread, thanks everyone.
>
> What's the scope for session-MACs, i.e. a new MAC generated and used
> each time an 802.11x network is fired up.
>
> As I understand it, the MAC does not functionally need to bear any
> intrinsic or permanent relationship to the device - it's merely a
> reliable identifier within that space during the period the network
> is operating.
>
It's technically possible to change the MAC address on most hardware and 
fairly easy to do
using Linux-based operating systems including the router/access point 
firmware replacements
like DD-WRT.   The option is usually not made available to the user in 
"user-friendly" operating
systems.  You run the (admittedly small) risk of accidently duplicating 
an existing MAC
address on the same network, however, which would cause some havoc (I 
have seen this in
the "real world").

Going a step further, in theory, you could possibly also cycle MAC 
addresses more frequently
(on a live WiFi network) if the clients support WiFi roaming and can 
reassociate with the new
address.  I doubt this could be made reliably transparent, though.

regards,
rik.



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