mac addresses...again

[ed]

some may recall, if I'm lucky, that I had a problem last September whereby I was trying to get the wifi adapter in Seb's machine to lock it's mac address. This was necessary in order to tell the router which machine to apply the parental controls to.
If the machine boots up with a different mac address on the wifi card each time then it's impossible for the router to apply parental controls.....

after much hair pulling and web searching I finally found a fix...
viewtopic.php?p=180232#p180232

well...move on nearly 12 months and the boy is now running a dual boot and every time he boots to linux the m/c uses a different mac address....

anybody got any idea how to lock the mac address on the wifi card under linux??

I'm not entirely sure that he didn't know this might be a loophole in the parental control malarky...I'm doomed...I'm such an infrequent user these days that it's much worse than knowing absolutely nothing about IT.

[Nick]

If he is running Linux, then effectively he can get around anything you do by using a VPN or Tor.

Its none of my business, but maybe its time for a conversation instead of trying to close the barn door?

[ed]

I'm intrigued....
how can tor circumvent the router cutting the connection?
in regard to the conversation.....there are issues....I'm willing to take advice offline.....

[Nick]

I'm intrigued....
how can tor circumvent the router cutting the connection?
in regard to the conversation.....there are issues....I'm willing to take advice offline.....

Well. what restrictions were you placing on the router that prevented stuff before? Give that I will see if I can think of a way around it. Or were you just blocking the mac address from sending any packets on the lan outside given times? Simple way around that would be to create a new mac address.

AS for the second part, I don't have that much to offer, all I did with mine was have the "don't be stupid and if you want ask" conversation. Between the three of them they seem to have ended up net savvy more by interactions with their peers than us.

[Nick]

Oh, and also check if there are any other wifi networks that may be available.

[ed]

the linksys router offers the following in parental control:

select the client from the map(router identifies by the mac address, assuming it won't change):

map.jpg (75.58 KiB) Viewed 4006 times

select restrict specific times from the choice page:

pcontrol.jpg (65.78 KiB) Viewed 4006 times

select times to cut the client device access to the wan:

edit-pc.jpg (50.26 KiB) Viewed 4006 times

if the device reboots with a different mac address it is invisible to the parental control

Or were you just blocking the mac address from sending any packets on the lan outside given times? Simple way around that would be to create a new mac address.

exactly so!...but he can't do that.

[ed]

AS for the second part, I don't have that much to offer, all I did with mine was have the "don't be stupid and if you want ask" conversation.

yep, worked a treat for my previous 4 offspring.

[Nick]

Well of he has the ability to dual boot then he can certainly change the MAC address.

[ed]

Well of he has the ability to dual boot then he can certainly change the MAC address.

well that really comes back to my first post and the question..how?????

If it's as arcane as the windows method then it'll be a few years before he finds that.

[ed]

ok...thanks for the effort, I think you're correct in pointing out that he may well find the method for setting a new mac address....
It didn't take much googling: macchanger or ip link...
I will set it for the time being, and see how long it takes him to twig...

I'm deffo losing it, I should have realised it would be far easier than the cobblers for windows.

[Nick]

You can get a Linux distro that boots from a usb key so that's simple enough.

[rowuk]

The answer is simple: White list instead of blacklist. Only allow your devices with their fixed MAC addresses. Everything else is blocked regardless if VPN or TOR. There is no easy way around except to steal your credentials...

[ed]

The answer is simple: White list instead of blacklist. Only allow your devices with their fixed MAC addresses. Everything else is blocked regardless if VPN or TOR. There is no easy way around except to steal your credentials...

yes rowuk, but that's the answer to a different question...

[Nick]

There is no easy way around except to steal your credentials

Wireshark to find the mac address of a interface that is allowed through, then use that address when its not being used.

[ed]

many thanks chaps.....I found the answer to my question at post 10...

the rest is way beyond my pay grade.

just to recap:
I need to fix the mac address in his pc so that I can set the parental controls in the router.
At the moment he plays games and doesn't know anything about mac addresses....when he does finally get round to such things I will cross the bridge. It may be a while, in which case I get a bit of rest from worrying about such things.