Unblocking download limits with MAC spoofing.

Every computer has various network interfaces on it like Ethernet card, Wireless card and other that allow it to communicate with the other computer on the internet. Each network interface on every computer on the internet has a unique MAC address or media Access control address. MAC addresses are defined by the manufacturer of the computer at the time of manufacturing. Different network interfaces on the same computer will usually have a different unique MAC addresses. It is possible to view the MAC addresses of your own machine by going to the MS DOS prompt and typing the command getmac –V:

C: /Users/r2k>getmac –V

The Greek alphabet

Connection Name	Network Adapter	Physical Address	Transport Name
Wireless Network	SW1520 Wireless	C4-46-19-4B-76-25	Media disconnected
Local Area Connection	Atheros AR8132	00-26-B9-CF-61-57	Media disconnected
Bluetooth Network	Bluetooth Device	C4-46-19-F2-AF-D1	Media disconnected
Wireless Network	Microsoft Virtue	C4-46-19-4B-76-25	Media disconnected

A number of companies, college and organizations have a policy on how much data each user can download from the internet in a specific amount of time. This is usually done to manage bandwidth and resources on network. Typically such download limits are enforced by recording the MAC address of all users on the network and then keeping track of the amount of data downloaded by all the MAC addresses. As soon as a particular internet access is taken away.

Once you reached the download limit assigned to your MAC address, if you want to still continue to download data from the internet, then you can try to change your MAC address using a technique called MAC spoofing. If you change of your MAC address to a new MAC address, then you may be able to fool your network into allowing you to continue to download stuff from the internet. There are very cool utility called MACMAKEUP that allows you to easily change your MAC address. Just select the adapter (the MAC address you want to change), Type a new MAC address and click on the CHANGE button. You may have disconnect and reconnect to the network for the MAC spoofing to come into effect.

Some other tools that allow you to perform MAC spoofing are MAD Macs, Ether Change, Bwmachak and others. It is also possible to manually change your MAC address from windows registry.

If you want to bypass your download limits using MAC spoofing, then normally you will have to change your MAC address to that of some other valid user on the network. So the obvious question now is how you can find out somebody else’s MAC address. It is quite easy to find out some other user’s MAC address by simply running a data sniffer on your machine to sniff data packets being sent across the network. Once you change your MAC address and pretend to be some other user, then you will be able to continue downloading as long as user can pretending to be does not reach their download limit. The firewall thinks that some other user is downloading data, but in reality it is you who is downloading data pretending to somebody else! On some networks, administrators have no restriction on the amount of data an administrator’s computer can download. This mean that if you are able to spoof your MAC address and pretend to be the one of the administrators then you may be able to get unlimited downloads on your machine as well!