To set up MAC filtering, you need to create a table or database of device addresses. There are situations in which it makes less sense to use MAC filtering - where, as Sharony puts it, the return in added security for your investment of effort is probably not enough. The last is not an entirely hypothetical question. “In most situations I definitely don’t recommend only using MAC filtering - on its own it’s not going to prevent the sophisticated hacker – but it’s another layer. “A good security strategy is built on layers,” Sharony says. Not necessarily, says Jacob Sharony, principal consultant and president of Mobius Consulting, a Long Island, NY wireless consulting firm. So is MAC filtering a dead issue? A layered security strategy
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Hackers also figured out how to circumvent it, by sniffing addresses of connected devices and then spoofing or masquerading as one of them. With the emergence of reliable encryption protocols, including WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access II), the strongest, we heard less about MAC filtering. If MAC filtering is activated, regardless of what encryption security is in place, the AP only allows devices on the safe list to connect, or blocks all devices on the black list – even if they have the encryption key. Using the access point configuration software, you can create a safe list of allowed client devices or a black list of banned devices. The MAC address is “baked into” the hardware and sent automatically to a Wi-Fi access point when the device tries to connect to the network. Learn when (and when not) to use this measure on top of strong encryption.īack before the Wi-Fi industry sorted out its problems with WEP (wireless encryption protocol), the original – and flawed – encryption security built into the technology, many experts recommended using something called MAC filtering to shore up the crumbling defenses.Įvery Wi-Fi device is assigned a MAC (Media Access Control) address, a unique 12-digit hexadecimal identifier issued by the IEEE, the standards body that developed the Wi-Fi protocol.
It’s not the be-all and end-all of Wi-Fi security, but MAC filtering can provide a layer of additional protection for your wireless network.
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