WIFI MAC address change

Hello.
LAPTOP ASUS G731GV.
I have discover that the mac address of the wifi subsystem have change between 2020/02/06 and 2020/02/21.
The only hardware change I made is to add a hdd and memory ram.

I am using network manager.
Network is not configured and used as is.
Only ethernet port is in use.
Wifi is not in use.
I am not running a VM.

the command ‘ip addr show’ show :

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 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 04:d4:c4:7a:f1:e6 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.130.100/24 brd 192.168.130.255 scope global noprefixroute dynamic eth0
       valid_lft 85848sec preferred_lft 85848sec
    inet6 fe80::d476:fd83:bc4e:a415/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether **ba:8b:e2:a5:4c:f3** brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: eth1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:0e:c6:b9:7f:7a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 

The wlan0 mac address (**ba:8b:e2:a5:4c:f3) **does not appear in yast2 hardware information gui (today) nor in the exported text files i have (2020/02/06 and today).

If you repeat the command later you get :


......................
3: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether **e6:31:d6:a2:34:00** brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
....................

yast2 hardware information gui (today) show 3 network cards :
One RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (eth0)
HW Address : 04:d4:c4:7a:f1:e6
phwaddr : 04:d4:c4:7a:f1:e6

One Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] (wlan0)
HW Address : 6e:05:f2:25:31:1e
phwaddr : d4:d2:52:a4:6f:50

One AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet (eth1) ( usb to ethernet interface )
HW Address : 00:0e:c6:b9:7f:7a
phwaddr : 00:0e:c6:b9:7f:7a

If you repeat the command later you get for Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] (wlan0) :


..............
HW Address : 26:82:4e:88:86:88
phwaddr : d4:d2:52:a4:6f:50
...................

and the exported text file is different :


.......
  HW Address: fa:2b:89:6e:72:ff
  Permanent HW Address: d4:d2:52:a4:6f:50
.......

Any comment is welcome.

Networkmanager creates random MAC addresses for Wifi to prevent tracking.
This is expected behavior.

Hendrik

OK.
But how a router can assign an ip address based on a mac address which changes at every boot ?

Hi
Disable the feature…

Great.

Thank you very much