Arch Linux

asafgre

Member

Registered: 2024-10-07

Posts: 1

how to work around OS identification discrimination by wifi router

The router at my college allows only Windows machines (not even smartphone OSs).
The admins are not willing to touch the settings.

1. What part of my Arch/Linux OS is giving away its identity? Is it done by the drivers?
2. How can I rewrite / update / recompile / reconfigure my wifi tools, to be identified as Windows ?

Thanks.

gromit

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 710

Website

Re: how to work around OS identification discrimination by wifi router

So whats the reasoning for this? To me this sounds like it's not really enforceable or adding any security value at all ..
No clue how to do disguise this properly though ...

yataro

Member

Registered: 2024-03-09

Posts: 76

Re: how to work around OS identification discrimination by wifi router

It probably uses TCP/IP fingerprinting. But there are a lot of techniques that could be used for such thing, see nmap -O for insights.
The most easy (but insane) way to work around this is to pass your wireless card to the Windows VM and host socks/wireguard there.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,084

Re: how to work around OS identification discrimination by wifi router

I guess you're thinking too complicated, https://man.archlinux.org/man/dhcpcd.8.en#i
Edit: try "MSFT 5.0"

To be clear:

The admins are not willing to touch the settings.

That's it? They're aware of the situation and don't mind you bypassing this - they just don't want to configure the router?
(They still might be able to fingerprint the OS, so don't pick a fight with them that gets your ass kicked out of the facility)

Last edited by seth (2024-10-07 16:10:49)

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,232

Re: how to work around OS identification discrimination by wifi router

The router at my college allows only Windows machines (not even smartphone OSs).
The admins are not willing to touch the settings.

The snarky part of me suggests you should pick a different school

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