[ERROR] Could not change MAC: interface up or insufficient permissions: Device or resource busy in Kali Linux latest version [ Solution]

 [ERROR] Could not change MAC: interface up or insufficient permissions: Device or resource busy when trying to change mac address on kali linux, how to solve? that's what we are gonna see in this post.

Today, i received this email from our blog reader Kali (dont' know whether its your real name, but thanks for shooting up the email even though when i was not writing contents that frequently compared to earlier days), Okay here is what his/her question was,.

Greetings for the day Lw! hope u are good.! I have a small problem hope u would answer that.!  recently i started learning Kali linux to prepare for my CEH, when i was trying to learn being Anonymous one of the topics i had touched upon was Proxychains and to go further, i tried changing my Mac using Mac changer tool, but whenever i tried to change the MAC address of my Kali linux i'm getting this error [ERROR] Could not change MAC: interface up or insufficient permissions: Device or resource busy in my terminal. Don't know how to Proceed further, i had referred your articles in the past for finding solutions for various Kali issues like finding wifi passwords stored on my Kali, changing grub wallpapers, infact finding about  metadata on whatsapp so, hope u would help me on this! Good day.!

I had replied his/her email with steps to solve this error, but thought of writing a separate post on this, so that in future if someone, had the similar issue then it will help people like you too....But before going to the solution, if you have a question like whether the solution will work on my Kali linux installed on Vmware, VirtualBox of Windows 10 or dual booted laptops, desktops,etc or whether its dependent on environment like gnome, XFCE , plasma, etc then i would like to say that, this solution is independent on all of those things, meaning it will work on all of the kali linux latest to old versions. Also, you dont' need to download macchanger or any tool from github because its already installed on your Kali linux OS. So, give it a try..! I will try to publish a youtube tutorial for the same, when i have time...

Also read : How to find PC Manufacturer information, Device Model number, Architecture,etc on any Kali Linux Latest version [Beginner's guide]

 Also, if you felt the terms like Proxychains is a kind of new to you, then dont worry i will publish a separate post on that soon. for now, consider proxychains as a service that is used to change your IP's, a kind of VPN mainly used by taking advantage of tor service.. You might ask why cannot i simply use tor instead of using service like proxychains as it needs some time to set up. Yes, your question is correct, but everything has its own advantages and disadvantages. I would say based on my experience, that some clearnet sites which were not working properly on tor, or if blocked just because of using tor, can be accessed freely with the help of proxychains, which is a kind of childish explanation yes it is.! Because, if i say the real reason, you too would start using the services like this instead of using VPN, Anyway i will say those in next posts, for now think it it as a service used for performing ip changing tasks with help of terminal. and mac changer as a tool to change your device's Unique ID (used to identify that this device belongs to you) I would encourage you to start researching, instead of waiting for that post....!

Okay, here we go 

How to Solve [ERROR] Could not change MAC: interface up or insufficient permissions: Device or resource busy in Kali Linux latest version :

Solving the error is really easy, you just have to think logically..

First one whenever a service like this needs to changed, then we have to down our network interface. You might have hundered of questions like why it needs to be done, again i would like to say, do your research because thats how we learn things.! For now, you can think like your device is already connected to internet, and your device id is already communicated to that particular website for example: if you are visiting the site google.com or bing.com your browser will communicate like this is my ip, this is my mac,etc which is how normally technology works, even sites use those things to verify that you are the one acutally signing in...You might have seen sometimes like your gmail, facebook,etc saying unrecognized device, verify its you! when u attempt to sign in right, thats because of this kind of information being collected in addition to verifying with coookies,etc.. So think it like if u change your device mac id, that server which has background Sync will know that u are somehow doing this kind of things, and you want to prevent that..

I'm assuming you had connected your Kali machine through Wifi, also as most wifi will have Wlan0, so run the following command..

ifconfig wlan0 down

if got error like no such interface then replace Wlan0 with Wlan1, Wlan2,etc

Note : if you had connected with ethernet cable then above command will not work till you replace wlan0 with eth0.    

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if you dont know, the interface you are working with, then run ip a command or ifconfig command, it will display the interface.

Okay, the next step is running macchanger command.. So, run macchanger -r Wlan0

Again, as said earlier replace wlan0 with your interface command.

The third step is making the wlan0 interface up, so run ifconfig wlan0 up

That's it, this will fix your error.! Incase, if your network manager thrown some error, then try running service networkmanager stop at the beginning of the command, and service networkmanager start after ifconfig (interface) up command..

That's it for now.,

Happy breaking..!