How to get TRUE hardware MAC address

c++ licensing mac-address license-key
AntonAL picture AntonAL · Jan 18, 2010 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

I know, that this question was created many times, but it is stil open

The problem is following:

My application need to generate some UID for computer, it working on. I need it to implement the genuine protection.

MAC address is a good candidate, because it is unique for each ethernet card.

Many articles uses either GetAdaptersInfo, WMI, NetBIOS or Sockets.

Here is one of them: Three ways to get your MAC address.

They, shore, return a MAC address, but this address can be set by hands from adapter properties

Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change Adatper Settings > right click on adapter > Properties > click "configure" button > go to "Advanced" tab > chose "Network Address" and change it

The all mentioned methods are not match my needs, because a MAC address, being set with driver has greater priority, than true hardware MAC address. This "fake" address will be returned by all Win API functions, that i know, and therefore, the genuine protection can easy be broken.

Any help from you, guys, will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer

Anon. picture Anon. · Jan 18, 2010

The only means that Windows has to access the MAC address is asking the driver.

That's what the driver is for - to talk to the hardware so that Windows doesn't have to include code for every single device anyone might come up with ever.

If the driver is telling Windows that the MAC address is something, then that's what the MAC address is.

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