Re: [LUG] MAC address on Android

[George Parker <georgeparker20@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/01/14 18:19, bad apple wrote:

This is Nexus specific, but quick googling shows this is actually not
that uncommon:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-galaxy-nexus/147857-wifi-mac-address-changes-every-reboot.html

Is the first part of your randomised MAC always 00:90:4C with just the
last three octets changing?

It looks like some moron engineer (maybe at Google) included some code
to once, and once only, generate a psuedo-random MAC and write it the
file /system/wifi/softmac, probably during the phone's initial
registration. They obviously broke something and some phones are just
running that code snippet every time and not permanently storing the
initially generated value.

Some people are reporting success after following the advice here:

http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/18251-random-wifi-mac-address-solved/

But I would just instantly return any network capable device that was
randomly regenerating MACs as not fit for purpose and be done with it.
How does stuff like this make it past QA?

Regards

My phone always has the first 3 as 00:08:22: then random.

I've had a closer look and find I've misled a bit. I have a tablet, cheapy direct from China running Android 4.1 and that returns the same MAC address every time. My phone is also a cheapy direct from China running Android 4.2 and this is giving the problem.  I'll see if I can dig out the details of where I got it and email them.
More worrying is an entry in my client list that gives:

Client name: Unknown
MAC address:  F0:A2:25:A1:99:A1
IP address:  192.168.1.7
Valid time: 01:39:22

All my devices have a client name so I presume that this is an outsider hooking into my Wi-Fi. I do have it password protected on WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK.

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