muslim@o2.pl wrote:

>Anyone know that NetBSD 2 will support changing of hardware adres
>of Ehernet cards ? I saw one patch to do this but not official i 
>think...[It wos ~6 months ago..]
>  
>
I don't think it would be a good idea... After all, the ethernet
address is hard-wired in the card, so this would potentially
cause lots of security problems... Just imagine someone
plugging a notebook into your corporate network and faking the
ethernet address of a trusted client, or worse, a logon server...
This is just an invitation to arp-spoofing -  sounds like the
magical feature Black Hat 133nux is still missing... =)

I wonder if it is possible at all, but I am not a programmer.
 From an administrator's point of view, I strongly hope this is
not possible and if it is, I hope it won't go into the main tree.

I know lots of networking tools can be both invaluable in debugging
stuff - packet sniffers, port scanners, even ping... But while faking a
MAC address may be useful for debugging, I think this i far too dangerous.

But wait - it _CAN_ be done... In fact, I've done it myself already! There
is a PC emulator called bochs that has the ability to emulate an ethernet
card with an ethernet address of your choice.
However, this would be useless for anything, since it's painfully slow - 
I get a ping
between 8 and 14 _seconds_ to my local machine. I can reach my DHCP 
server, but
that's about it; TCP connections reliably time out... =)

Kind regards,
Benjamin