Same bluetooth address on all nexus 5 devices

Ub

Hello everyone,
I have bought 2 nexus 5 phones, and after meeting issues with Bluetooth, I was really surprised when I found out that the phones have the same bluetooth mac address, as well as the nexus 5 of someone I know (with UT too).

Only one of my phones has a working bluetooth though, the other one can't see devices except 2 "unknown" devices. I tried rebooting, turning on and off bluetooth and wifi... no result.

Besides fixing bluetooth, I need to know an important thing : Is it possible to change the bluetooth mac address ?
I tried to change the content of /persist/bluetooth/.bdaddr but no result, it's encrypted btw.
I'm really confused, a broken bluetooth on one device is a problem, but having similar addresses on a bunch of devices is another problem...

Keneda

@ub
What is this mac address, so that i look at my N5 if i also have the same ?

Ub

@keneda It's 43:39:00:07:1F:AC

kugiigi

@ub Same for my 2 Nexus 5. I guess someone decided to hardcode that XD

Ub

@kugiigi That's really strange. But I'm wondering if the address is still the same on android. I would need to restore android to check it. But as far as I know, it's a physical address, then the OS doesn't matter.

Keneda

@ub @kugiigi wow, so we just really all have the same BT mac address on our N5, just checked and same here !

cliffcoggin

@keneda Me too, though Bluetooth is not something I use.

AppLee

@ub
A MAC address is not hardcoded in silicon.
Have you heard of mac spoofing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing
It's an attack method used to usurp a legitimate device's identity (MAC address)...
mac spoofing is also necessary for a VM where a single physical device has many virtual ones to differentiate them we need to change their mac address.

So yeah probably hardcoded in the N5's port.