MAC address filtering for wireless networking isn’t real “security”. Anyone who pays any attention to current trends in wireless security at all should know that MAC filtering is less effective than WEP — and that WEP can be cracked almost instantly these days with commonly available tools.
This doesn’t mean MAC filtering is useless. Its resource consumption is almost unmeasurable, and even if it doesn’t keep out any reasonably knowledgeable security crackers willing to spend a few moments gaining access, it does keep out a lot of automated opportunistic attacks that are aiming solely for the absolute lowest-hanging fruit on the security tree. Since that lowest-hanging fruit consists of the majority of wireless access points, MAC filtering can be of value as a way of turning away the majority of opportunistic attackers.
Don’t rely on MAC filtering alone, however. Please, just don’t. It’s a bad idea. People seem to think “Oh, well, sure a determined attacker can get past it, but not anyone else.” It doesn’t take much determination at all to spoof a MAC address. In fact, I’ll tell you how..
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