Mac and IP

[Blu3Sab3r]

Say I were to commit a crime (like to sell leafs ^^) at a hot spot can it be traced? If they were to me, would they trace to the IP or will it trace to the IP or will they trace the Mac as well? What is Mac address and can it be changed?

[mistrfree]

The Mac address is Media Access Control number for your hardware. Being that you were to connect to anothers' network, and they did do an IP determination it would resolve to their particular access point. Considering the MAC address would give them the hardware type used, but being that you're mobile, it would be very tough to trace you down.

To add: within Win2000 and XP, a user can change the mac address but I am not aware if this is possible to do on any handheld devices as of yet.

[Cliepro]

Can not change MAC address only if you change Motherboard in the Clie


Cliepro

[AceCobra1]

Its dodgy anyway... who would want to hide thier IP if they haven't done something wrong ? Unless ur a fraudster or something... Just traced one to Istanbul a few days back who claims that he was an american businessman selling his $2000 VAIO for $700

[Blu3Sab3r]

Well no, Im doing something along the line of stealing Wifi signal from my neighbor. No Im not going through their networks or files, just simply talking to you guys and surfing the web. Merry Christmas and to all a good night!

[dwig]

Tracing is probably possible but can get extremely difficult when you bridge from one network to another.

A simple case is when you connect a WiFi device to an Access Point and then through a hardware Firewall device (often part of the same box as the AP) onto another network. An "AP" like my SMC Barricade, presents its own MAC address to the WAN, the "Internet" side of its firewall. The MAC address on the "internal" connections, whether WiFi or wired, are not visible from the WAN side of the firewall. Tracing would require accessing the log files for the firewall, if they exist, to determine which external IP packets were associated with which internal internal packets.

Accessing this data is difficult, nearly impossible, from the outside, but is often available from the inside. If someone "steals" my internet connect via my WiFi signal, I can easily see the MAC address of the thief's machine along with the IP address assigned to it, although my IPS can't. Steal my internect bandwidth and I'll easily help any bonafide cyber-crime investigation by providing a copy of my AP's log. Any law abiding WISP will do the same.

BTW, _please_, always capitalize all letters in this acronym; all acronyms should always be in ALL CAPS. "Mac" is an abrievation meaning "Macintosh" and "MAC" is an acronym meaning Media Access Control.