Does anyone have any instructions as to how I can randomize my Mac Address on Ubuntu 20?

Question

The problem I’m running into is randomizing my MAC address which is tied to my Ethernet interface name (enx503eaa292ae3; just an example address btw). Whenever I type macchange -r , I get “interface not found”.

*substitute interface with actual network interface name

ip a

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 100.0.0.1/8 scope host lo valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 181: enx00e00c000d0f: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000 link/ether 00:e0:4c:68:0d:0f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 100.108.0.01/24 brd 100.108.0.205 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enx00e00c000d0f valid_lft 85828sec preferred_lft 85828sec inet6 fe80::3d24:a2de:493e:1cab/64 scope link noprefixroute valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

After entering macchanger -r {interface}. this is what i got:

[ERROR] Could not change MAC: interface up or insufficient permissions: Operation not permitted

Answer 1

In Terminal to generate random mac address try this:

macaddress=$(echo $FQDN|md5sum|sed 's/^\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\).*$/02:\1:\2:\3:\4:\5/')

you can print a new mac address

echo $macaddress

You should see an output that looks like 02:68:b3:29:da:98 and then use it in your config. I have been using it on KVM VM's quite successfully. Random mac address will always start in with a first octet as 02 which you can use to track in your environment easily.

Or like this:

openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)/\1:\2:\3:\4:\5:\6/'