MAC address

[Modderfokker]

Back on the mac address issue. Can't MAC addresses be the same. because manufacturers get lazy?

[nihil]

Hmmmm,

Not really my area, but the answer should be "NO". Where the device has a BIA (burned in address) it should be unique like the serials on banknotes. That is not to say that mistakes cannot happen

However there is stuff that has changeable MAC addys by design.

http://www.sdadapters.com/

I am no networking guru, but I believe that duplicates can happen on those as well, by accident rather than design.

[dopamin]

@Modderfokker

The first half of the MAC address is unique for every manufacturer
ieee standards

So I doubt they make mistakes there, but MAC conflicts do happen.
Duplicate MAC Addresses on Cisco 3600 Series

[ThePastorGang]

This makes several assumptions. The first is that the crook didn't use something like NTPASSWD cracker and broke in to wipe the HD clean. The second thing it assumes is that the person was able to login and simply decided to use the machine as is.

Listen to Horse.

Back in my burglary days, I would usually use a NT password insertion disk to login as admin just to roam around directories out of curiousity. After checking through everything, I would just re-format and put a fresh install.