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Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBoxPicking a MAC address for a FreedomBoxPosted Dec 6, 2012 8:27 UTC (Thu) by oever (subscriber, #987)Parent article: Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox
How can the Apple database be queried to get MAC addresses? From the description, it seems the Apple location system takes MAC addresses and returns an approximate location. What is the need for that system to return MAC addresses?
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Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox Posted Dec 6, 2012 12:30 UTC (Thu) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
One answer is that if you're a government in a country in which Apple is keen to operate, you can simply ask them, perhaps providing various "incentives".
One could also imagine such a database being a worthwhile target for skilled attackers.
But yes, John was talking about sending MAC addresses and getting locations back. Which would certainly be useful for tracking the movement of devices.
Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox Posted Dec 8, 2012 15:35 UTC (Sat) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
s/John/Jon/g
Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox Posted Dec 8, 2012 15:42 UTC (Sat) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
s/amused poster/sleepy commentator/
Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox Posted Dec 6, 2012 19:45 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
MAC address only _have_ to show up on the local lan (wireless or wired). If you are talking to something through a router, you don't see the MAC address, just the IP address.
However, Apple devices tend to use the MAC address as a device identifier (it is after all a unique value for each device), and they make extensive use of that unique value in their apple proprietary infrastructure.
One of the 'hacks' that has happened 'recently' was someone noticed that accessing iDevice info on the ATT website used the MAC address in the URL, changing the MAC address provided gave you access to other people's information.
I don't know anyone other than Apple that does this same thing.
Picking a MAC address for a FreedomBox Posted Dec 9, 2012 16:08 UTC (Sun) by bboissin (subscriber, #29506) [Link]
Just to be clear (I think the article is very confusing), I don't think Apple (or anyone else) uses a database of MAC address. Instead they have a database of BSSID (which is the MAC address for the wireless access point).
Looking at the freedombox website, it's not even clear they can be used as a wireless access point.
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