Question / Suggestion? MAC address banning.

[Jake Bunce]

Is it possible to ban MAC addresses? If you can, is this feature planned for future vB versions? IP banning is simply not working for a couple peeps on my forums. They're either dynamic or they have a bunch of statics they can use or they have multiple net accts or they just go to their schools and post from there, or the libraries, etc. MAC address banning would be very effective if it could be implemented.

[Mas*Mind]

there's no way to get the mac-address from someone. (with php that is)

[thewitt]

Originally posted by Jakeman
Is it possible to ban MAC addresses? If you can, is this feature planned for future vB versions? IP banning is simply not working for a couple peeps on my forums. They're either dynamic or they have a bunch of statics they can use or they have multiple net accts or they just go to their schools and post from there, or the libraries, etc. MAC address banning would be very effective if it could be implemented.

Assuming you could get the user's MAC address, you would still have the same problem banning someone from using the computers at their school, the library, etc. How many MAC addresses are available to the person you are trying to ban? How many computers are in their school or at available public libraries?

MAC addresses are not available in the HTTP specification anywhere, so you won't get access to them without installing something on their computer to dig it out for you. Any software that did that would be quickly branded as a security/privacy violator and would likely be committing commercial suicide.

-t

[Jake Bunce]

ewwww... well, MAC address banning would knock out one physical computer each... that's better than knocking out one logical address that can be changed on that same computer. oh well, i guess it wasn't meant to be.

[Mas*Mind]

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the IP-packets don't even contain the mac-address...

[poil11]

it is not possible to ban a mac based on the ip adress. i think that you are thinking about it the wrong way. you can ban all macs by saying, no wait there is no reason to tell you. because you are thinking the wrong way.

[Mas*Mind]

Originally posted by poil11
it is not possible to ban a mac based on the ip adress. i think that you are thinking about it the wrong way. you can ban all macs by saying, no wait there is no reason to tell you. because you are thinking the wrong way.

:confused: Something tells me you're thinking we are talking about apple-imac's....

[Mike Sullivan]

AFAIK, the issue that allowed you to get the MAC address was more of a bug than anything else. Hence I'm not sure if exploiting it would be a good thing :)

[Jake Bunce]

lol, yeah... like I'm gonna ban mac browsers from a mac oriented web site.

[Kier]

ban them ban them!! :D ;)

[Christian]

The MAC adress is an unique ID number of a network interface card.
IPX/SPX uses the MAC adress to send and recieve packages.

Howevery, a user connected with a modem or an ISDN card has no MAC adress! (at least not related to the IP adress he uses)

[Jake Bunce]

MAC addresses aren't unique, it's a scam. They just make two identical cards (same MAC) and ship them to different sides of the world. My MCSE teacher has found two identical MAC addresses in NICs before. Scandalous.

[Christian]

This isn't done on purpose!

It can always happen that a BIT is burnt in wrong, and then you have 2 identical cards!

That can happen!

That also happens with the serial number burnt in the P III!

[Kier]

That's a bit like macintosh freaks - believe it or not, there more than one of them out there... scary eh?

[rebby]

Originally posted by Mas*Mind
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the IP-packets don't even contain the mac-address... they don't... they arp for it & a cache is kept... for example -> whassup:/home/curt # cat /proc/net/arp
IP address HW type Flags HW address Mask Device
192.168.1.5 0x1 0x2 00:50:04:E1:6F:6F * eth1
192.168.1.2 0x1 0x2 00:80:5F:CA:7F:4C * eth1
xxx.xxx.x.x 0x1 0x2 00:30:80:5D:9F:54 * eth0

[Mas*Mind]

jep, thnx; You freshed up my networking lessons ;)