macchanger
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Utility for manipulating MAC addressesMAC addressesA hardware-address identifier used on a local network, such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi. It identifies a network interface for delivery on that link, rather than routing across the internet. of network interfaces.
macchanger --different eth0
Summary
macchanger is an open-source command-line utility that views and manipulates the MAC addressMAC addressA hardware-address identifier used on a local network, such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi. It identifies a network interface for delivery on that link, rather than routing across the internet. of a network interface, letting you set it to a specific value, a random one, or another vendor's address. It costs nothing and runs as a small program on Linux systems, invoked from the terminal against a named interface. It suits penetration testers and privacy-conscious users who need to bypass MAC filtering, evade tracking on a network, or impersonate a specific hardware vendor during an engagement. It sits in the wireless-security and anonymization space alongside other low-level networking utilities rather than any single named competitor. Its history is long but slow: first committed in 2013, maintained by four contributors, with no commits in the past year, so treat it as stable rather than actively developed.
Utility for manipulating MAC addresses of network interfaces.
How macchanger helps
What is this interface's original hardware address before I start changing it?
reads and displays the interface's permanent MAC address as recorded by its hardware, so you can restore it later
Can this laptop still be tracked by the address it broadcasts on this network?
assigns a randomly generated MAC address to the interface, replacing the one that was previously associated with your presence on that network
Will this device be recognised as one from a different manufacturer during an engagement?
sets the interface's address to one drawn from a list of real vendor OUIs, so the interface presents as hardware from that vendor
Can I get back the address this card shipped with after testing is done?
writes the interface's original, permanent hardware address back onto it, undoing any spoofed value in place
Does the address I set actually stay within a real, valid range for a network card?
checks the value against the known vendor address list and warns when it falls outside the ranges those vendors actually use
Languages
Command line
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail macchanger puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
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Releases
2 entries
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- October 20261
- December 20021
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in alobbs/macchanger, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors not measured distinct committers, last 12 months
- Maintainers not measured core set, last 12 months
- Bus factor not measured committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog 61 of 82 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 61
- Contributors / month not measured
- Commits / month not measured
- Stars 702
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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