Not able to spoof MAC address in Kali Linux

Question

The MAC address is spoofed when the network interface is down or not connected to any AP. But as soon as I connect to any access point it changes the spoofed MAC address to the original address.

I tried the following to spoof my MAC address:

ifconfig wlan0 down
macchanger -a wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 up

Even tried to stop and start network-manager with the above command still nothing.

I also changed the MAC changer command with this:

ifconfig wlan0 hw ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

And still no luck.

The /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ has stored the original MAC address and changes the spoofed address to the original. When I disconnect from the network, the MAC address is changed back to the spoofed address.

When I open the “Settings > Networks,” and go to the AP's settings, I am able to set a clone address and it works perfectly. But I want to be able to change the MAC address from the terminal itself, so I don’t always have to go to the settings to change it.

I even tried to forget the AP and set a new connections with spoofed MAC address, still it always seems to revert back to the original address.

Answer 1

I had the exactly same issue as yours after doing everything you did! I read this in the official Kali Linux forums.

Well I didn’t stop there as well and got around to it finally with below procedure and hopefully it will help you too.

1. Down everything wlan, lo, eth, etc…

   ifconfig wlan0 down
   ifconfig eth0 down
   

2. Stop service manager

   service network-manager stop
   

3. Add your address:

   ifconfig wlan0 hw ether 00:00:00:00:00:05
   

4. Start your service manager:

   service network-manager start
   

5. Un-block all:

   rfkill unblock all
   

6. Finally up your card:

   ifconfig wlan0 up
   

Then check if it worked by running this command:

ifconfig | grep ether

Hopefully you will then have something like this shown:

ether 00:00:00:00:00:05  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)