5 ms·

This seems like it should be a default indeed. It does make it harder to assign fixed addresses to your devices in your home network. At least openwrt only seem

This seems like it should be a default indeed. It does make it harder to assign fixed addresses to your devices in your home network. At least openwrt only seems to have static DHCP leases based on MAC and not on the advertised DHCP name. For most devices this doesn't matter as it does add a DNS entry with whatever IP it assigned. But when you then want to add a firewall rule to port forward something to a device a fixed IP is much nicer.

paulfurley 9y ago
True - I could update the script to allow for whitelisting certain networks so they receive a stable-forever MAC address..?
- pedrocr 9y ago
  That would probably make a lot of sense. Can the network manager setting also be changed per network? It would be nice to do this with the normal config in the future.
  - paulfurley 9y ago
    Yes, in network manager 1.4.1+ (ubuntu 17.04+) you can set each network to `random` or `stable` as well as a global default for new networks. This config file updates the global default (but I can't use it yet!): https://gist.github.com/paulfurley/978d4e2e0cceb41d67d017a668106c53 https://gist.github.com/paulfurley/978d4e2e0cceb41d67d017a66...
evilDagmar 9y ago
What makes it easier is having fixed goals in mind, because I am seeing a lot of people in this thread arguing because they're all solving different problems which is obviously going to mean different solutions. If your only concern is passive tracking, then a randomized MAC being used for SSID probes (because whitelist-only hidden SSIDs are rare enough that those people can manually connect) will be sufficient. If you're looking to keep an open Wifi provider from tracking you over the course of days, then using a different MAC for each connect is going to be sufficient. If you're looking to avoid tracking by people doing traffic analysis to correlate by behaviour no amount of MAC trickery will help you. If one is looking to avoid having to pay for overstaying their visit at a coffee house or similar capture portal, maybe what needs to be changed is one's sense of ethics, and changing a MAC won't help with that. So, you can say "it should be a default" all you like, but everyone's going to have a different idea of what the default is for and they're going to throw a fit about it not being "the right default". Better to be conservative like Android and avoid inciting the newbs.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  Your different problems with different solutions have at least a part that everyone agrees on like iOS doing it for probes. We can definitely argue what the right default is but will probably agree that no randomization at all is not a good one and move to at least some. Ubuntu currently does none.
jimmaswell 9y ago
This would be a bad default because it breaks things like staying signed into a network with a login gateway.

paulfurley 9y ago

True - I could update the script to allow for whitelisting certain networks so they receive a stable-forever MAC address..?

pedrocr 9y ago
That would probably make a lot of sense. Can the network manager setting also be changed per network? It would be nice to do this with the normal config in the future.
- paulfurley 9y ago
  Yes, in network manager 1.4.1+ (ubuntu 17.04+) you can set each network to `random` or `stable` as well as a global default for new networks. This config file updates the global default (but I can't use it yet!): https://gist.github.com/paulfurley/978d4e2e0cceb41d67d017a668106c53 https://gist.github.com/paulfurley/978d4e2e0cceb41d67d017a66...

evilDagmar 9y ago

What makes it easier is having fixed goals in mind, because I am seeing a lot of people in this thread arguing because they're all solving different problems which is obviously going to mean different solutions. If your only concern is passive tracking, then a randomized MAC being used for SSID probes (because whitelist-only hidden SSIDs are rare enough that those people can manually connect) will be sufficient. If you're looking to keep an open Wifi provider from tracking you over the course of days, then using a different MAC for each connect is going to be sufficient. If you're looking to avoid tracking by people doing traffic analysis to correlate by behaviour no amount of MAC trickery will help you. If one is looking to avoid having to pay for overstaying their visit at a coffee house or similar capture portal, maybe what needs to be changed is one's sense of ethics, and changing a MAC won't help with that. So, you can say "it should be a default" all you like, but everyone's going to have a different idea of what the default is for and they're going to throw a fit about it not being "the right default". Better to be conservative like Android and avoid inciting the newbs.

pedrocr 9y ago
Your different problems with different solutions have at least a part that everyone agrees on like iOS doing it for probes. We can definitely argue what the right default is but will probably agree that no randomization at all is not a good one and move to at least some. Ubuntu currently does none.

jimmaswell 9y ago

This would be a bad default because it breaks things like staying signed into a network with a login gateway.