How To Change The Mac Address Of A WiFi Card On Windows 10
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for what you (the reader) do with this information. This tutorial is for educational purposes only and the techniques there-in should be practiced on a system you legally own. It is my responsibility to notify the reader that the information you will learn should not be used for illegal activity. However, if anyone who reads this is dumb enough to do so, again, I am in no way responsible. Also, I am not liable if you do any damage to your computer if you incorrectly implement what you will learn here. Just in case you do make a mistake, create a system restore point before making any changes to your system.
What are MAC addresses? The acronym MAC stands for Media Access Control. Media Access Control addresses are a unique combination of letters and numbers assigned to the NIC (Network Interface Card) of a computer system; be it a laptop, desktop computer, or smart phone. This number distinctly identifies your computer on a network. Generally, all MAC addresses are unique however there have been cases of duplicates being issued to two different systems. Quick note: desktop computers and laptops usually have two NIC’s, one for wired connections and another for wireless connections.
But why would anyone want to change their MAC? Well, if you are doing some ethical hacking you may want to change your computer’s identity on your network by changing its MAC address. Some network administrators implement MAC Filtering in order to restrict access of certain devices to the network; You can circumvent this by simply changing your system’s MAC. I don’t advise you to go around breaking into systems that implement such restrictions unless you legally own said system.
In this tutorial, we will focus on changing the MAC address of a Windows pc wireless NIC. Let’s begin by opening up command prompt; To do this just press both of the corresponding keys in the image below:
This will bring up Windows Run applet, a program which allow you to run various Windows commands / programs. Once open, type the command cmd in the prompt like so:
Click the OK button and command prompt will open. Once it opens, we will type the command getmac and press enter:
Lets examine the output in the image above. Under the column labeled Physical Address you will see a ten character series of letters and numbers separated by hyphens, this is your wireless card’s MAC address. On the far right under the column labeled Transport Name, there are a long group of numbers and letters surrounded by curly braces. That is the transport Id number; This number is important because we can use it to find the registry location of your wireless card which we will be working with soon. Leave the cmd open and go to Control Panel =>Network and Sharing Center, just search for Control panel in Windows search bar, then click on Change adapter settings as highlighted below:
Once you’ve clicked on the link, you will be taken to Network Connections:
Again, it is the MAC address of the WiFi card we will be modifying so right click on your WiFi connection and choose disable:
This will completely disable your wireless card; Don’ worry you will re-enable it later. Leave the Network Connections screen open for now. Run the Windows “Run Applet” again and type the command regedit:
Click OK and the registry editor will open:
To quickly give you what the Registry Editor is, it’s a a database that stores low-level settings for the Windows operating system. The folder we will be working in is the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, click on the arrow “>” next to this folder and expand. Then scroll down to SYSTEM and expand it:
When you have the SYSTEM folder expanded, scroll down to ControlSet001 and expand this folder:
Find the Control folder and expand it, then scroll down to Class and expand it as well:
Remember when i mentioned how important the transport Id will be later? Now is the time to refer back to it:
As in the above image, highlight the first eight numbers of the transport id then press the CTRL and C keys to copy the text. Now go back to the registry editor, right click the Class folder, click Find and paste the text you just copied into the prompt:
Now click the Find Next button:
When the search is complete you should find yourself in the correct folder:
Look at the NetCfginstanceId entry highlighted above; look over to the far right at the number next to the entry encased in curly braces. Notice that this number is the same number next to our Wifi MAC address output we made note of in command prompt, the transport Id. This ensures us we are indeed in the right registry entry. To be on the safe side, go ahead and compare both numbers. We are now going to add a new entry; click on the Edit tab then go to New and click on String Value:
Name the new string value NetworkAddress then right click on it and choose Modify:
In the prompt you enter this MAC address value 0E1122334455. You can use any arbitrary number you choose just make sure the address is twelve characters long with the second character being a 2, 6, A or an E. Note: Try any new combination of these characters if the MAC address fails.
Click OK; Now we will go back and enable the WiFi adapter and try to connect to the internet network:
Once it has been enabled, try and connect to the internet. If you are successful, your should see this on the Network Connections screen:
Try going to a web page, if it loads successfully congratulation! Now let’s run the getmac command one more time. Hopefully you left the command prompt open during this exercise:
As you can see in the blue highlighted output in the above image, we have completely changed the WiFi card’s MAC address to a new one. This can be done over and over when ever you feel the need to change it. This brings us to the end of the tutorial; I hope this was a fun learning experience for you. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all in the next post.
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