Yup...the MAC is unique per piece of hardware. However, afaik, the driver knows it's mac and knows to only pull it's own packets off the network. Sniffers work more by ignoring this little bit of info.
Some companies (dsl/cable) make you register a MAC. If you buy a router, then a lot of them allow you to assign your PC's MAC to the router so you don't have to call the company and have them change it.
VMWare has the ability to generate or assign MAC's to the virtual ethernet devices. This way if you need to have a disaster recovery situation that depends on a MAC (say for licensing) then you can continue on.
man ifconfig shows how to do it in Linux. You'll see that it is quite easy and capable becomes someone who can type. I'll agree the percentage who will go through all this will be a smaller amount, but that doesn't make it any better if you were the student whose MAC was used like this and are now being accused.
When you are mugged walking down the street, chance are a police report gets filed, etc... there is a lot more proof that chances are you didn't buy that big screen TV or whatever the mugger did with your wallet. In this case you don't know this has happened - more similar to someone jacking in to your phone line outside your house where the box is and doing something.
ecore.com was another bad one for me. My boss asked me to try out their software...it gives you detailed listings of all the settings on your machine.
It worked and did a good job, and I'd probably like their Oracle version, but the NT version (a few years ago) spat out a LOT of default NT settings and it was kinda hard to find your changes against the defaults. So I said no thanks.
Constant calls, and I've been spammed by them ever since, even though I've e-mail half a dozen e-mail address I found there and have been told I've been removed from all their mailing lists several times - both by "respond to unsubscribe" and by some higher ups in the company.
Like the other company...if you don't make the sale, don't pester the hell out of a potential customer. Now instead of thinking of these two companies as possible companies to go to if I ever did need such products, I think of them as pains I'll never want to buy from, no matter how good.
another company, MG-SOFT, makes a great MIB browser. Got a demo, they e-mailed me asking if I was gonna buy it...I said I'm trying to get the funds, they said great, let them know if they needed anything. A couple weeks went buy and I got one other e-mail asking if I was gonna buy it and with a discount code to use as a thanks for trying it - all this was from a human, not auto generated. We bought it, got a thank you e-mail and have received no junk mail from them since.
presumably. Yes...you may have registered that MAC, but once it is registered, what is to stop someone else from faking it as theirs?
Like you said, it may not be enough certantiy for use in court - I would think anything short of catching the person red-handed wouldn't be enough.
The problem is that a student is now faced with some high legal bills to prove their innocence, which could be the financial death of them.
A few hundred years ago, just about 30 minutes from MIT, Salem had a habit of accusing and letting people prove their innocence. Unfortunatly it was along the lines of "oh...she did drown, guess she wasn't a witch afterall". Welcome to our modern witch hunt, complete with government bought backing.
Assuming that no one has figured out the student password.
Yes, it is getting a little stretched here, but it would be possible and probably easy to get someone's MAC, userid and password and masquerade as them.
Sure, in a perfect world this would not happen, but I'm betting that somewhere at UCB, there is a service using student id/pw's that is not encrypted. Or perhaps student workers at the help desk have access to this info, or to change this info as part of their job.
I know where I work, there are way to many student/part-time workers with WAY too much access in all sorts of departments. In addition, non-tech savvy students are too willing to give their password out for some help.
This is a lot more likely to happen than someone looking just like you on a security camera driving a car looking just like you according to witnesses robbing a gas station.
I'm thinking about our campus. For the student VLAN, we have a DHCP server. Right now, anyone can come on campus, plug into a port, get an IP and launch Kazza.
There really is no way of tracing someone down unless we find the machine online and go see who is plugged in that port.
All that is assuming that someone did not forge the MAC address to be someone elses.
So, a school could turn over student info, and that student would have to expend tons of $$$ to prove it wasn't them, or just cave and pay off the RIAA extortion. (Sounds like SCO)
What's next, laws requiring a certain amount of logging everywhere? And who is gonna pay for this? Are the gonna outlaw dumb hubs?
Note to self...someone is trying to get a program called num-utils installed on as many unsuspecting machines as possible. Must be some new back-door or trojan...do not install.:)
The idea behind this is to have a way of sending cash electronically yourself - kinda like what Western Union does, just without them.
If you send the money to Joe's Gun Shop, it is the same as if you just walked in with the $1000 and plopped it down...albiet now you don't have to go across town or across the country. The product then gets shipped to you.
If there is a gun shop that works like this, then the ATF will probably be quite interested. Brady bill? background checks?
OF course, that is assuming that all crimnials buy their guns legit and you never have this:
Criminal: I want to buy this.45 Dealer: Let me run a background check...hmm...says here you are wanted in 5 states for violent crimes...can't see it to you. Criminal: Oh well...guess I won't kill that person after all. Do you sell a book on quilting instead?
The problem is that everyone always goes right for the Cl1t system...they never look around to see what other options there are first.
What's wrong with the K1S5 system? Hmm? Why not start off with a nice K1S5 transaction? You don't have to go leaping at the Cl1T system like a bull at the gate.
I was just thinking something like that. MS pumps some money into SCO...makes the CEO's richer/happier. Basically - sacrafice SCO and we'll take care of you.
If SCO wins, then they win pretty well. If they lose, the damage has been done because all the PHB's will now remember that Linux=legal trouble.
Nevermind the outcome of the case, once the initial info gets in their heads, followup info never makes it in.
So, everyone ends up running Windows.
Damn...I've been hanging around here to long -getting consipiracy theoried.
The could tie it into Marillion albums, as Brave was originally gonna be called Severn - due to the main female taking a junp from a bridge over the river.
I might just setup a RH machine again if they did that:)
I got a call from some sales guy from some company once. I was busy, so I told him to send me some literature. Got it, looked at it, wasn't interested, so pitched it.
Apparently the sales guy thought that by sending me junk, he now has the right to call me whenever. First time I told him I wasn't interested, second and third times I added not to call me back. Fourth time I laid into him - he called by bosses number. Fifth time I did some research and sent his boss and a few other high-up's in the company an e-mail explaining how I had nicely asked to stop being bothered by the company and that they have now left a very bad impression, and that I talk with lot of other people that they may want to deal with, and am not afraid of sharing my opinion of a company if asked.
The VP of the company sent me an e-mail back saying (THE SALES GUY) IS DOING A GOOD JOB GETTING THE NAME OUT THERE SO BUY SOME PRODUCTS FROM US. (no lie - all caps).
Upshot is I've not been called anymore.
I look at it like X-10 - they've made some good products, but as soon as marketting/sales starts to lead, even the best company can get dragged downhill.
I was going to, but I wanted to let my wife sit in it, and since the original seat was under the GPL, I'd have to release my modifications for her to sit in it. I thought about bringing my own special chair, but there was confusion as to whether the plane was under the GPL or LGPL, and I didn't want to have to release my specs by interfacing the two.
From now on, I only fly on airlines that provide BSD seating.
FYI, the english are not a hated minority. Go to Montreal yourself, go to a restaurant, and you WILL be served in english with a smile. If you go outside of Montreal (like real far, 100+miles) you probably will run into some places where they don't talk english, because they don't need to.
Three of us were in Vermont skiing and drove to Montreal for dinner. Went to some pizza place. About the only problem we had was I had to tell the bartender how to make a white russian.
Everywhere we went in Montreal we were treated nicely. Waiter came out and asked us something in French after dinner, even though he knew we didn't speak french. My friend answered We, and then asked what he said. He laughed and told us we were brave to answer yes to something we didn't understand.
Only other "problem" we had is they gladly take US money, but give the change in canadian. For all I know, we were getting shafted. Made figuring out a tip kinda difficult.
But like your last paragraph says - just because the language is mostly the same, doesn't mean everything else is. US isn't the same as Austrailia or the UK. And I'm sure there are some people who think the Chinese and Japanese speak the same language jsut cause it isn't english.
I would think that they would. If they don't, then they have no case at all. It would be too easy to have it thrown out. It's like saying "that person ate at McDonalds last week, we'd like to convict him for the robbery that happened Thrus at 8:05am.
And if I posted something critical and not very flattering, but true about a company? They could somehow claim DMCA and get that info as well, makes for fine harrasment.
Or what if I worked for Delta and posted an anonymous comment on some message board expressing my dissatisfaction with the cuts on the line while the higher ups get bonuses. And Delta could somehow get that info from the ISP. All of a sudden I get the crappy hours, replacing toilets and getting a drug test every other day.
True - they'd have to provide some DMCA notice, but how long before ISP's just turn over the info in a heartbeat?
As someone who sometimes has to find out who had an IP - there are two things needed - an IP and a timestamp...that alleviates the problem of having the same IP as someone the day before.
IMDB started off as a database on three computers with an e-mail interface. It's got better.
Hopefully this will.
Actually, the hobbit was listed as 1937. I would think if they were gonna make an IMDB kinda thing, they would have added some more of the cool stuff from the start.
I seem to remember that Peter McDonald (SLS) was pretty pissed about slackware - I think it had something to do with Slackware basically taking the SLS packages and making better install scripts or something. Or different packages with SLS's install scripts...don't remember the details, just that Usenet was in a tizzy about it.
If/. had been around then, it would be a 1200+ comment article:)
Slashdot Mirror
Thus helping RIAA to sue the youth of america who is interested in older music whose copyright should have expired years ago.
Yup...the MAC is unique per piece of hardware. However, afaik, the driver knows it's mac and knows to only pull it's own packets off the network. Sniffers work more by ignoring this little bit of info.
Some companies (dsl/cable) make you register a MAC. If you buy a router, then a lot of them allow you to assign your PC's MAC to the router so you don't have to call the company and have them change it.
VMWare has the ability to generate or assign MAC's to the virtual ethernet devices. This way if you need to have a disaster recovery situation that depends on a MAC (say for licensing) then you can continue on.
man ifconfig shows how to do it in Linux. You'll see that it is quite easy and capable becomes someone who can type. I'll agree the percentage who will go through all this will be a smaller amount, but that doesn't make it any better if you were the student whose MAC was used like this and are now being accused.
When you are mugged walking down the street, chance are a police report gets filed, etc... there is a lot more proof that chances are you didn't buy that big screen TV or whatever the mugger did with your wallet. In this case you don't know this has happened - more similar to someone jacking in to your phone line outside your house where the box is and doing something.
For the "man"less:
# ifconfig eth2
eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:18:02:2E:B5
# ifconfig eth2 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
# ifconfig eth2
eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:22:33:44:55
well...30 minutes as the mapquest flies.
I've driven in Boston (where a Stop sign is just a suggestion) a few times and blame that for my lack of hair.
ecore.com was another bad one for me. My boss asked me to try out their software...it gives you detailed listings of all the settings on your machine.
It worked and did a good job, and I'd probably like their Oracle version, but the NT version (a few years ago) spat out a LOT of default NT settings and it was kinda hard to find your changes against the defaults. So I said no thanks.
Constant calls, and I've been spammed by them ever since, even though I've e-mail half a dozen e-mail address I found there and have been told I've been removed from all their mailing lists several times - both by "respond to unsubscribe" and by some higher ups in the company.
Like the other company...if you don't make the sale, don't pester the hell out of a potential customer. Now instead of thinking of these two companies as possible companies to go to if I ever did need such products, I think of them as pains I'll never want to buy from, no matter how good.
another company, MG-SOFT, makes a great MIB browser. Got a demo, they e-mailed me asking if I was gonna buy it...I said I'm trying to get the funds, they said great, let them know if they needed anything. A couple weeks went buy and I got one other e-mail asking if I was gonna buy it and with a discount code to use as a thanks for trying it - all this was from a human, not auto generated. We bought it, got a thank you e-mail and have received no junk mail from them since.
That I like.
presumably. Yes...you may have registered that MAC, but once it is registered, what is to stop someone else from faking it as theirs?
Like you said, it may not be enough certantiy for use in court - I would think anything short of catching the person red-handed wouldn't be enough.
The problem is that a student is now faced with some high legal bills to prove their innocence, which could be the financial death of them.
A few hundred years ago, just about 30 minutes from MIT, Salem had a habit of accusing and letting people prove their innocence. Unfortunatly it was along the lines of "oh...she did drown, guess she wasn't a witch afterall". Welcome to our modern witch hunt, complete with government bought backing.
Assuming that no one has figured out the student password.
Yes, it is getting a little stretched here, but it would be possible and probably easy to get someone's MAC, userid and password and masquerade as them.
Sure, in a perfect world this would not happen, but I'm betting that somewhere at UCB, there is a service using student id/pw's that is not encrypted. Or perhaps student workers at the help desk have access to this info, or to change this info as part of their job.
I know where I work, there are way to many student/part-time workers with WAY too much access in all sorts of departments. In addition, non-tech savvy students are too willing to give their password out for some help.
This is a lot more likely to happen than someone looking just like you on a security camera driving a car looking just like you according to witnesses robbing a gas station.
I'm thinking about our campus. For the student VLAN, we have a DHCP server. Right now, anyone can come on campus, plug into a port, get an IP and launch Kazza.
There really is no way of tracing someone down unless we find the machine online and go see who is plugged in that port.
All that is assuming that someone did not forge the MAC address to be someone elses.
So, a school could turn over student info, and that student would have to expend tons of $$$ to prove it wasn't them, or just cave and pay off the RIAA extortion. (Sounds like SCO)
What's next, laws requiring a certain amount of logging everywhere? And who is gonna pay for this? Are the gonna outlaw dumb hubs?
Note to self...someone is trying to get a program called num-utils installed on as many unsuspecting machines as possible. Must be some new back-door or trojan...do not install. :)
The idea behind this is to have a way of sending cash electronically yourself - kinda like what Western Union does, just without them.
.45
If you send the money to Joe's Gun Shop, it is the same as if you just walked in with the $1000 and plopped it down...albiet now you don't have to go across town or across the country. The product then gets shipped to you.
If there is a gun shop that works like this, then the ATF will probably be quite interested. Brady bill? background checks?
OF course, that is assuming that all crimnials buy their guns legit and you never have this:
Criminal: I want to buy this
Dealer: Let me run a background check...hmm...says here you are wanted in 5 states for violent crimes...can't see it to you.
Criminal: Oh well...guess I won't kill that person after all. Do you sell a book on quilting instead?
The problem is that everyone always goes right for the Cl1t system...they never look around to see what other options there are first.
What's wrong with the K1S5 system? Hmm? Why not start off with a nice K1S5 transaction? You don't have to go leaping at the Cl1T system like a bull at the gate.
Etc, etc...
I really don't remember. Something like NCSI or something...they sold refurbished hp/sun/ibm equipment. In Indiana.
I was just thinking something like that. MS pumps some money into SCO...makes the CEO's richer/happier. Basically - sacrafice SCO and we'll take care of you.
If SCO wins, then they win pretty well. If they lose, the damage has been done because all the PHB's will now remember that Linux=legal trouble.
Nevermind the outcome of the case, once the initial info gets in their heads, followup info never makes it in.
So, everyone ends up running Windows.
Damn...I've been hanging around here to long -getting consipiracy theoried.
The could tie it into Marillion albums, as Brave was originally gonna be called Severn - due to the main female taking a junp from a bridge over the river.
:)
I might just setup a RH machine again if they did that
I got a call from some sales guy from some company once. I was busy, so I told him to send me some literature. Got it, looked at it, wasn't interested, so pitched it.
Apparently the sales guy thought that by sending me junk, he now has the right to call me whenever. First time I told him I wasn't interested, second and third times I added not to call me back. Fourth time I laid into him - he called by bosses number. Fifth time I did some research and sent his boss and a few other high-up's in the company an e-mail explaining how I had nicely asked to stop being bothered by the company and that they have now left a very bad impression, and that I talk with lot of other people that they may want to deal with, and am not afraid of sharing my opinion of a company if asked.
The VP of the company sent me an e-mail back saying (THE SALES GUY) IS DOING A GOOD JOB GETTING THE NAME OUT THERE SO BUY SOME PRODUCTS FROM US. (no lie - all caps).
Upshot is I've not been called anymore.
I look at it like X-10 - they've made some good products, but as soon as marketting/sales starts to lead, even the best company can get dragged downhill.
time for analog laptop displays.
I was going to, but I wanted to let my wife sit in it, and since the original seat was under the GPL, I'd have to release my modifications for her to sit in it. I thought about bringing my own special chair, but there was confusion as to whether the plane was under the GPL or LGPL, and I didn't want to have to release my specs by interfacing the two.
From now on, I only fly on airlines that provide BSD seating.
FYI, the english are not a hated minority. Go to Montreal yourself, go to a restaurant, and you WILL be served in english with a smile. If you go outside of Montreal (like real far, 100+miles) you probably will run into some places where they don't talk english, because they don't need to.
Three of us were in Vermont skiing and drove to Montreal for dinner. Went to some pizza place. About the only problem we had was I had to tell the bartender how to make a white russian.
Everywhere we went in Montreal we were treated nicely. Waiter came out and asked us something in French after dinner, even though he knew we didn't speak french. My friend answered We, and then asked what he said. He laughed and told us we were brave to answer yes to something we didn't understand.
Only other "problem" we had is they gladly take US money, but give the change in canadian. For all I know, we were getting shafted. Made figuring out a tip kinda difficult.
But like your last paragraph says - just because the language is mostly the same, doesn't mean everything else is. US isn't the same as Austrailia or the UK. And I'm sure there are some people who think the Chinese and Japanese speak the same language jsut cause it isn't english.
I would think that they would. If they don't, then they have no case at all. It would be too easy to have it thrown out. It's like saying "that person ate at McDonalds last week, we'd like to convict him for the robbery that happened Thrus at 8:05am.
How is it harrassment to get information?
/. poster.
It's not, but once they know who I am they could harrass me based on the info they got.
You should have used encryption.
Uh...yeah...for a line workder at Delta as in my example, I'm sure they will be griping on 3DES message boards.
Guess you'll be smarter next time, now won't you?
Smarter than tha average
Yup...a backup copy on another 8" floppy. It's over there on the file cabinet, being held up by that magnet :)
I have a box of 5.25" disks I need to get some stuff off of. If I don't get a drive in my machine and do it soon, I may be out of luck.
And if I posted something critical and not very flattering, but true about a company? They could somehow claim DMCA and get that info as well, makes for fine harrasment.
Or what if I worked for Delta and posted an anonymous comment on some message board expressing my dissatisfaction with the cuts on the line while the higher ups get bonuses. And Delta could somehow get that info from the ISP. All of a sudden I get the crappy hours, replacing toilets and getting a drug test every other day.
True - they'd have to provide some DMCA notice, but how long before ISP's just turn over the info in a heartbeat?
As someone who sometimes has to find out who had an IP - there are two things needed - an IP and a timestamp...that alleviates the problem of having the same IP as someone the day before.
IMDB started off as a database on three computers with an e-mail interface. It's got better.
Hopefully this will.
Actually, the hobbit was listed as 1937. I would think if they were gonna make an IMDB kinda thing, they would have added some more of the cool stuff from the start.
I seem to remember that Peter McDonald (SLS) was pretty pissed about slackware - I think it had something to do with Slackware basically taking the SLS packages and making better install scripts or something. Or different packages with SLS's install scripts...don't remember the details, just that Usenet was in a tizzy about it.
/. had been around then, it would be a 1200+ comment article :)
If
Wow...I just racked my brains and I can't think of one person I know who is a lawyer.
I know a couple people who may have started a law degree, but no one I know is actually a lawyer.
No wonder I feel so clean.