Should I use a MAC address to validate users for my program?

I'm writing a graphical console program and I was planning on using a few methods for security. One being to block a user from logging in again if they don't type the correct username and password within three tries until the root user authenticates it again. I was planning on blocking the IP address but someone suggested blocking the MAC address since no 2 have the same ID and it's burned in, not to mention alot of people have dynamic addresses. However, I was reading that MAC addresses are mainly used in ethernet cards. I thought any device that has network capabilities has to have a MAC address? Is it good to use a MAC address for blocking someone from logging in again or what?

Its very easy to change your MAC address. If you have a wireless router (which you can buy for like 20 dollars) then you can tell it what MAC address to use. So I agree, don't use a MAC address to block users from your program. Also are you sending the username/password over the network in clear text? If so, these can be intercepted. So doing that may be a bad idea; it depends on how much security you want for your application.

Similar Messages

E4200 v2 - Uses multiple MAC addresses for the same device

This unit seems pretty good at first but on looking at the Web interface I noticed that it was using multiple mac addresses for the same device and showing devices on the lan on the Wireless side and other odd things.
After a week of running it the home server network started to get erratic, it would seem to all point to dns and dhcp issues in the router.
Seems the V1 had the same issues that they did not fix on this.
The Cisco connect software shows 5 devices the Web based utility shows 3??.
Its pretty bad that they charge nearly $200 and cannot be bothered to finish the unit or address the issues that were in V1.

I am afraid I didn't get the clear picture of the issue mentioned in the post. Could you please elaborate a little bit? If you connect a device/computer wired and then later you connect it wirelessly. It is obvious that you would get to see two different MAC addresses for the same device, one for the LAN adaptor and other one for WLAN adaptor. If that is what you are referring to?
Secondly, may I know, what issues did you face with DNS and DHCP in the router? Is it not able to resolve the DNS or something else or DHCP is not sending IP address to the clients?

I have purchased Wedding Style By Miracle Design - it is showing in the downloads but I can not get it into lightroom - I am using a mac and the instructions are for windows.

I have purchased Wedding Style By Miracle Design - it is showing in the downloads but I can not get it into lightroom - I am using a mac and the instructions are for windows.

Return, cancel, or exchange an Adobe order

I want to use my Mac desktop as a portal for viewing my cable television via some kind of cord. Is this possible and what do I need to set this up?

I want to use my Mac desktop as a portal for viewing my cable television via some kind of cord. Is this possible and what do I need to set this up?

It can be done with analog but not digital thanks to "good 'ol" HDCP copy protection which apple (and most other manufacturers) unfortunately respect.
So you can take the analog output from your cable box (component -- 5 cables -- if it has it but generally they all have composite -- 3 cables) and feed it into some kind of converter or into some appropriate pci card for your mac pro. But none of them are going to let you directly use the HDMI output from the box to your computer.
Bottom line, no single cord is going to work and it will never be the higher quality digital picture you get on your tv.
Some qualification: There are boxes that I think support hdmi input. Look at Blackmagic. But I still don't think you can get around the HDCP from the cable box (might depend on the kind of cable box).

Is there any way to track a stolen laptop using the mac address, or by triangulating the wifi, or even by checking to see if the macbooks serial number has been registered online anywhere?

A little info on my question,
I had it stoeln on June 22nd 2013. I had recently bought it so had not installed any software on it nor did I have registered with icloud. I had contacted police, registered it stolen with Apple (but then just discovered this week that apple do not have a database for stolen products, which makes no sense at all).
I have contacted all the major pawn shops and computer stores in town etc etc. I have recently discovered that each laptop has a unique MAC address whcih begs the question, is that traceable somehow? I have been made aware that the router strips the mac address before it connects it to the internet but does the isp log the laptops MAC address? If i contacted all the major isp in my country would they have the ability to search for the mac address of my latop and then link that with an ip address?
Any help would be great please!

karlgporter wrote:
Yeah but I registered it stolen with Apple first thing, then called local police etc. Apple told me on the phone that the serial has been logged as stolen, which I assumed would limit the computers use online.
Every machine has a unique serial number what I was getting at is there must be some way to track the serial number and for example if the theif logged onto facebook using a stolen machine, if there were a register of stolen equipment then red flags would pop up, you know what I mean?
Well, I hadn't heard of that before. If it's true, then what you say should also be true but the Mac would have to publish its hardware serial number over the Internet and I haven't heard of that either. The only Apple tech that is supposed to constantly track you is iCloud.
You said you assumed the database would limit use online but if that's only an assumption, you need to ask Apple what exactly the stolen database does. It is possible that the serial number might only get flagged if it comes into an Apple Store for service, if it ever does. You need to clarify this with Apple.

Is it possible to get the exact model of a product manufactured by Apple using its MAC address alone?

Didn't know where to really put this, but if anyone could help me out I'd much appreciate it.

You might want to have a look at MAC address - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for a description of how MAC addresses are assigned and what they mean.
Basically part of the MAC address will identify the manufacturer, the rest of the address can be used as the manufacturer sees fit as long as it is unique.
So it is possible some manufacturers might encode the device into the MAC address but it is not universal or mandatory.

CSS VIPs use old MAC address after firewall failover

We have our CSS load balancers behind our firewalls in a DMZ and when the firewall fails over the physical interface changes the MAC address to the new address of the now active firewall but the VIP's do not and all traffic to those VIPs are broken. Has anyone experienced an issue like this before? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

I understand you have CSS load balancers behind firewalls in a DMZ, could you clarify what interface changes the MAC address to the new address of the now active firewall after firewall failover? are you expecting VIPS failing over too?
If firewall failed over, depends on types of firewall, for some firewall, mac will change, new Active Firewall sends a 'gratituous' arp which makes the neighboring devices to save the new mac address of the Active firewall with the ip address. It seems to be your case. If for some reason, that is not happening (gratituous arp missing), it could cause issues like VIPS on CSS broken.
The failover of the firewall should be transparent to CSS VIPS. Did you take a capture to see what is happening? did CSS receive requests properly? is CSS load balance to server properly?
If you require CSS failover when firewall failover, then you can define critical service (layer 3) or critical physical interface(layer 2), and if that detect link to firewall down, then it could fail over.

Using non-mac address for "reply to"

I want all my mail to go via mobile me so that it all messages, sent and received, will be stored online.
But I also want people to reply to my non-mac address. Is there any way to automate this apart from typing the address in the "reply to" field for every message?

Hi Roger,
I admit I haven't tried this myself (I don't have Leopard) but have a read of this:
http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips/qt/etalwaysreplyto.htm
The last post in this article also explains how to amend the 'From' part of the email headers if you wanted:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020904062730654

Using the Mac as a wireless Bridge for the Xbox 360

Want to use your Mac essentially as a wireless adapter for an Xbox 360 or any console? plug in the ethernet cable between the two devices and follow the setup process!
Wireless Bridge setup process
1. Open system Preferences.
2. Clisk sharing, then the internet tab and select Airport as the “share your connection from” then select the Built-in Ethernet in the list.
3. Open up the terminal Application and type ifconfig en0 in the window it sohuld display an outcome like this
ifconfig en0
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
ether 00:16:cb:cc:80:aa
media: autoselect status: inactive
supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,flow-control> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control> 1000baseT <full-duplex> 1000baseT <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control> none
4. This gives you the information of what your computer’s IP address is. On the xbox dashboard in the network setup screen select manual and select the top section which contains the IP address, subnet mask, and Gateway address, for the IP address, input the Highlighted section above plus one, so its 192.168.2.1 (this is for standard configurations, again, just add one to the last digit of your IP address.
5. Open Airport Admin Utility, the select configure on your airport. Then select the Internet tab This will give you your subnet Mask, input accordingly.
6. For the Gateway address, you are going to put in the value in the blue box. This is because you are using your Computer as a gateway, therefor you need to tap into its connection.
So For the Average setup you will use:
IP Address: 192.168.2.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway Address: 192.168.2.1
7. Now for the DNS server, this varies according to What internet service you have, but, Airport admin utility provides the answer, right below the information we used above, you will see DNS Server. viola! Put that in as your primary DNS server in the second box of edit options in the network menu.
Now you should be complete, test the connection and you should be Ready to Go!! Happy Gaming!

Welcome to the discussions, DanSwiggsD!
If you have a non-Apple device as your main router, unfortunately the AirPort Extreme has almost no chance of compatibility with your main router.
If you do have an Apple router as your main device, please post back with your model number and we'll let you know how your devices should be configured.
If you don't have an Apple device as your main router you have a few options to connect the xbox:
1) A pair of ethernet powerline adapters could be used if you did not want to run a regular ethernet cable from your main router to the xbox.
2) The new AirPort Express 802.11n model does have a feature called Proxy STA which should allow it to receive a wireless signal from any wireless router and allow the ethernet port to be enabled.
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons

Someone keeps trying or has been using my email address to sign up for all kinds of accounts. What can I do?

I have had this email address since apple offered family accounts for me.com. For the past 4 years, someone has been using my email to sign up for accounts. They have repeatedly tried to reset my password. I keep getting emails from companies. I have been very nice and responded back to personal emails telling them that they must have typed in the wrong address. I have emailed different companies asking them to delete any and all accounts using my email address for me.com or icloud.com. This person has even been using my email to use to turn in her homework on turnitin.com. I have asked them to please alert the school to let the person know that this is not their address and please not to use it. I have recently discovered that they are trying daily to reset my password. Is there anything I can do besides changing my email?

OMG, there is someone else who is experiencing this? I swear, I have used up all patience and trying to be kind when dealing with this.
I created my primary email account [email protected] a very long time ago. Of course, it morphed into [email protected] and most recently into [email protected]. This behavior occurs with all three variations, but most often with the "@me.com" address. In trying to understand the timeline, I figured it started occurring about the time of the iOS release 5.
I get approximately 10 account creation emails a week. Mine range from harmless to education to medical to ****. At one time I was getting as many as a hundred a week! I also send very politely worded emails to the companies explaining that someone tried to sign up with one of the variations of my emails and ask them to delete any or all accounts associated with them. Unless of course, they are ones that I want to keep.
The problem with telling companies to delete the accounts is that it is now sitting out there for someone to setup the account AGAIN. I have started simply requesting a new password or password reset, change the public facing data and leave it be. This will only work with accounts that require email validation, though. I have stumbled upon accounts while trying to create my own! Again, I simply change the public facing info and password and email. It then becomes mine. I've had a couple of accounts - a Disney site - that won't reset the password or delete the accounts because I can only validate the email address and none of the other account info! Sigh.
I have worked with Apple many times, sometimes for many hours trying to resolve this issue. Apple tends to be myopic and generally sticks with "someone just mistyped the email"... but it happens much too frequently for this to be true. I know it is a popular and coveted email address and perhaps people think they can force the company to recognize it as their own. I've also had requests for the Apple accounts to be reset.
Recently had an interesting chat on Apple's Messages with an 8 year old who swears that it is her friend's iChat account. She admonished me to be nicer if I was sharing it with her friend. I couldn't make her understand that her friend was incorrect in believing it was hers.
I see that you've written your message way back in February and I see no other follow ups. Have you been successful in making this stop?

How can i sync mac address book w/ outlook for mac 2011

Is it possible to have the address book in Outlook for Mac 2011 sync w/ the Mac address book? I cleaned up my contacts in the Mac address book expecting the changes to show up in my outlook address book. Made over 200 changes that did not show up on the Outlook address book. Seems like there should be a way to make this work. If I add contacts from within Outlook, I'd like them to show up on all my devices. MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm new to this platform as I was a PC guy for the last 30 years.

I've got Outlook up and running just fine. Still have the problem with getting duplicate emails but I'm waiting on MS to get a fix for that in an update. Apparently that has been an ongoing issue. I've been in contact w/ a senior MS Outlook tech on that. I guess I'll just have to make sure that all contact adds/edits are done in Outlook. Then I can sync my phone or iPad and get the cloud to update the other Apple devices off that sync. Either that or figure out how to export from the Mac address book to the Outlook address book once in a while.

Cannot enter MAC Address into Filter Settings for WAP4410N.

When I do ipconfig /all to pull up its MAC address, I see it starts with 8C:60:XX:XX:XX:XX. When I try to add it to the 4th entry of my Client List on the AP4410N, it rejects it with a dialog box:
"MAC 4 must be 12 Hex chars (0~9 and A~F) with optional delimiters (: or -), and the second bit is not a odd number."
I checked over and over that the Wireless Card MAC address is correct and this is the first time I noticed a MAC address card starting with anything but 00. Any ideas what I can do?
THanks.

Hi Nicolas,
I see, since I have the first 2-bit of the wireless adapter with 8C..I will just change to 80? is that what you mean?
Yes I'm sure iI can add that address to the list, but does it mean that my wireless adapter with 8C is the same with 80 and able to connect to wireless?
Thanks
Erik

What should I use? - Developing from AI to Flash for Mac, iPad & Windows

Not sure if I am in the right forum so if not please let me know.
I want to develop an app to use on our Mac, Windows, and iPad systems. It would run locally and not over the internet. In short I would take template art from Illustrator files and convert to a usable flash files. The app would allow the user to change the named fields on the templates to their company name for visualizing the art. I have been doing some testing and this appears to be possible.
I am obviously new to this and trying to understand what/how to develop. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Thanks for the help and you are correct I have not gotten into the iPad enough for any testing.
I have read that Flash is not supported and also read that it is supported on the iPad. Confused as to what this page is telling me regarding a "Packager for iPhone IOS" - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ and this page http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html
Is this stuff just wishful thinking or only on iPhone or something else? Again thanks for the help.

Having compatiblity issues with adobe reader. What pdf file software should I use with Mac

Having problem with Adobe reader what software works well on mac for pdf file creation/reading and sending via email. Also how do I uninstall adobe reader so that all hints of it are erased.

To remove the Adobe PDF Reader:
1. Drag the Adobe Reader folder from the Applications folder to the Trash
2. Remove AdobePDFViewer.plugin from the Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder
Macs offer good PDF capability in the operating system. You can use Word or other program to create somthing you want to save/send in PDF format, then choose print, click on the PDF button at the bottom of the print window, where you can choose to email the PDF file.

I get junk mail on my iPad that states "this message has no content". If I click on it my mail freezes up and after some time my mail program works again. I use a .mac address. Anyone have similar issues?

I get junk mail on my iPad that states "this message has no content". If I try to delete it or click on it my .mac mail freezes up and it takes some time for my mail program to continue. Has anyone else had this issue? Ideas for resolution?

Yeah, I've seen it from iOS 7 to the present. It appears to be a network issue, as the Mail app is trying to grab the information to display the first few lines in the abbreviated display. I haven't had mine freeze though. When I click on it, it will simply show a blank message. Now I can quit the app and later reload the app, and "sometimes" the contents come back right away. In other instances, not right away, but eventually.
You might try quitting all the apps, then going to the Settings app to Reset and reset your Network Settings. The iPad will reboot. Try it again after that.

Should I use a MAC address to validate users for my program?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for