Let’s face it; MAC filtering is not an effective way to combat brute force attacks against pre-shared keys. On my Access Point (AP) at home, in other words my home router, I use MAC filtering not as a security mechanism but rather as a way to assign a private IPs to a specific device’s MAC address using a method called “IP Reservation” with DHCP. This basically ensures the IP is reserved and ready for use on that particular device the next time it connects to the network. With that said, defeating MAC filtering in regards to cracking pre-shared keys is very doable. MACs can be masqueraded “spoofed” very easily, such as, capturing an end-user’s MAC address using a passive network scanner. Continue reading →