At 11:33 AM 10/26/04 , Benjamin Walkenhorst wrote:
>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

[snip]

>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.

Like other people have mentioned, it *is* possible, and even common among other operating systems. The reason is that it's useful. Sorry, but relying on a MAC address for authentication is not sufficient. I know it's tempting to use ethernet cards as hardware security tokens, but don't :)

FWIW, some uses include: Getting around silly ISP restrictions, so that you can use the service you're paying for without having to install their ethernet card (like muslim is doing); Putting an invisible security box / router / gateway on the LAN; etc. In any case, it should be obvious that anyone performing black-hat ops with this feature will get the job done with or without NetBSD supporting the feature out of the box, so there's no reason to leave it out and hurt the users who are using it for constructive purposes.

-Tim