[ale] electronic hell

Kyle kyle at txmoose.com
Thu Mar 9 18:26:45 EST 2017


Oh believe me, log files aren't for the feint of heart or the unfocused. There's always something complaining. 

I had an old hp laptop years ago (it was actually my first Linux computer) that had a really odd issue. It seems that HP purchased the wireless card from some super cheap manufacturer, and that manufacturer couldn't be bothered to register a block for MAC addresses, so they just had the wireless card generate itself a new one randomly on boot. 

Imagine just how much that screwed with someone who was just learning Linux! Haha it was a mess. Perhaps that's what's going on? 

Other than that, maybe your router is doing some network scanning that looks pretty in it's web GUI? The arping tool and ARP table will be your friend in figuring that out. 

The more I look, the more I think network manager is trying to change your MAC address? Do you have more of those lines? Dump em into a pastebin or gist and link me if you care to explore it more. 

On March 9, 2017 6:11:43 PM EST, kilpatms at comcast.net wrote:
>email evil daemon has been run off.  But I have learned that the
>paranoid should not spend much time wading through log files. This,
>clearly, is one place where a little knowledge can be dangerous.
>
>these are sample lines:
>
>>Mar  9 17:36:07 localhost NetworkManager[817]: <info> 
>[1489098967.1631] device (wlp3s0): set-hw-addr: set MAC >address to
>06:CE:CD:14:30:65 (scanning)
>>Mar  9 17:36:07 localhost kernel: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp3s0:
>link is not ready
>>Mar  9 17:36:07 localhost NetworkManager[817]: <info> 
>[1489098967.6396] device (wlp3s0): supplicant interface >state:
>disconnected -> disabled
>
>
>My question is: what MAC address is that?  It doesn't belong to any
>computer on the LAN. Should I just forget about this or is
>someone/thing probing my laptop?
>
>these lines with other MAC addresses show up every few minutes. 
>Earlier I identified four different MAC addresses looked for in 30
>minutes.
>
>Sean
>
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--
Very respectfully,
Kyle Brieden



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