[Interest] Unique - Hardware bound - ID

[Alex Malyushytskyy]

Some discouragement (from personal experience):
 - often systems have more then 1 network card and do not guarantee that
they will return the same MAC addresses even after simple reboot (Windows
XP as an example) not even counting different configurations.
 - I am not sure what Qt uses to receive MAC address , but assuming it uses
native API,  the same MAC address will be returned for any system which
does not have a network card installed (or have it disabled in current
configuration)

Mentioned above should encourage do not rely solely on MAC address for
computer identification.

Regards, Alex



On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 3:52 AM, Konrad Rosenbaum <konrad at silmor.de> wrote:

> **
>
> On Tuesday 14 May 2013 22:27:23 Alex Malyushytskyy wrote:
>
> > Such things are normally resolved using MAC address on any system, which
> is
>
> > unique for every network adapter,
>
> > But there always may be a system which does not have network adapter,
> have
>
> > a few network adapters or does not let you to obtain MAC address unless
> you
>
> > are a root (Linux)
>
> >
>
> > I do not think Qt support this, but if not counting some complications
>
> > listed above, native for system code you will have to right is easy.
>
>
>
> You can get MAC addresses via QNetworkInterface::allInterfaces().
>
>
>
> Some encouragement: 99.9% of all PCs and Laptops do have a network card
> and/or Wireless Interface. Unless you target the 0.1% of non-networked
> machines you can assume to have one (even if it is unconfigured). At the
> very least if your app has network access then you can assume ethernet
> (modem-only machines are exceedingly rare these days).
>
>
>
> Some words of caution: MAC addresses can be changed in software. Depending
> on your paranoia level you may not want to rely on them - in that case you
> may want to think about hardware dongles to secure your app.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Konrad
>
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>
>
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