Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 19:20:04 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: "Vladislav V. Anikiev" <vladani@mail.spbnit.ru> Cc: Brian Reichert <reichert@numachi.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MAC address Message-ID: <3C649564.F51D18BE@mindspring.com> References: <200202090052.DAA62563@neo.spbnit.ru>
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"Vladislav V. Anikiev" wrote: > > Hello Brian, > > The MAC address - I meen The Media Access Control address (i.e., ethernet > hardware address, not IP address). I want to use the default hardware (not > current physical ) address in my license management software. > > Why did you write: "Depending on the NIC". The NIC means Network > Information Center. Doesn't it ? Network Interface Card. Some NICs allow you to change the default MAC address by reflashing the BIOS in them. There are tools to do this in software. The common reason for doing this is to replace a dead NIC card with a new NIC card, so that you can still use all the same licenses with the same license manager software, which is node-locked. 8-). Another reason to do this is to de3feat license managers. Typically, people who are really anal about their license management then respond by using a cryptographic dongle. Crackers then respond by making the kernel act as if the dongle hardware were local, and proxying the dongle requests across the network to a real dongle on some other machine. Perhaps you can use the Pentium unique ID? This is what Microsoft does for XP online registration: they turn on the unique ID feature, get the unique ID to uniquely identify you, and then upload all sorts of demographic information about your machine to them, to better maintain their monopoly by forcing users of their products to provide demographic information to them that no one else has access to, putting them in a stronger position to know what hardware to target with their software products. If you were to use the unique ID, by loading a kernel module, turning it on in protected mode, and then reading the unique ID, then turning it off, you could be just like Microsoft Windows XP machine identification. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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