I was reading back through the posts on Hackaday.com today and discovered this article.
From the page:
The FTDI FT232 chip is found in thousands of electronic baubles, from Arduinos to test equipment, and more than a few bits of consumer electronics. It’s a simple chip, converting USB to a serial port, but very useful and probably one of the most cloned pieces of silicon on Earth. Thanks to a recent Windows update,all those fake FTDI chips are at risk of being bricked. This isn’t a case where fake FTDI chips won’t work if plugged into a machine running the newest FTDI driver; the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer.
Reports of problems with FTDI chips surfaced early this month, with an explanation of the behavior showing up in an EEVblog forum thread. The new driver for these chips from FTDI, delivered through a recent Windows update, reprograms the USB PID to 0, something Windows, Linux, and OS X don’t like. This renders the chip inaccessible from any OS, effectively bricking any device that happens to have one of these fake FTDI serial chips.
Because the FTDI USB to UART chip is so incredibly common, the market is flooded with clones and counterfeits. it’s very hard to tell the difference between the real and fake versions by looking at the package, but a look at the silicon reveals vast differences. The new driver for the FT232 exploits these differences, reprogramming it so it won’t work with existing drivers. It’s a bold strategy to cut down on silicon counterfeiters on the part of FTDI. A reasonable company would go after the manufacturers of fake chips, not the consumers who are most likely unaware they have a fake chip.
The workaround for this driver update is to download the FT232 config tool from the FTDI website on a WinXP or Linux box, change the PID of the fake chip, and never using the new driver on a modern Windows system. There will surely be an automated tool to fix these chips automatically, but until then, take a good look at what Windows Update is installing – it’s very hard to tell if your devices have a fake FTDI chip by just looking at them.
Link is Here
This is important information for all diy'ers. Im sure a lot of the cheaper imported modules,boards etc will no doubt have these in them.
Fortunately there is a fix in the comments for bricked devices.
Comments
Dave Jones always tells it like it is
Personally, I think the move constitutes criminal destruction of property.
I think FTDI is probably just responding to the dilution of their trademark in the only way they can.
Millions of noobs refer to all TTL serial and serial -> USB devices as "FTDI".
Since common use of their trademark to refer to a generic product has diluted it beyond enforcement they really have no other choice.
Legally, they probably couldn't successfully sue anyone from stamping "FTDI" on their chips or devices anymore, so they were left with little choice.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/ftdis-anti-co...
When Microsoft "time-bombed" tens of thousands of pirated versions of WinXP overnight, I didn't hear any calls any cries of sabotage, even though many of these PCs may have been in critical systems.
Device drivers are written for specific hardware and distributed to OS companies (spelled Microsoft) to allow that device to talk to the OS. If a cloner uses this driver for his clone, and it now stops working, I can not see that he has a leg to stand on, what-so-ever.
Robert, the difference is intent.
A bad device driver is generally simply one that does not work as expected or has some undetermined dependancy that makes it non functional.
In this case, the express intent of the update is to damage or destroy the functionality of a possible part in my system.
Normal, accidental incompatibility is perfectly reasonable and understandable, intentional sabotage is not!
Further there is a very good chance that under many circumstances, those running this update containing this bit of espionage are going to have no idea whatever has caused their system to stop working.
This chip is incorporated in likely millions of systems world wide, many of which are sold to consumers who have no idea how to troubleshoot or fix this kind of problem and many of whom do not even have access to such information at all.
For them this is a permanent and "hard" act of sabotage, permanently destroying the functionality of their device.
An accident or unintentional oversight is one thing, this was an act of deliberate attack and act of war against the general consumer populace.
Since it was intentional, they should be criminally charged, if no laws were, in fact, broken, then we need new laws.
Best Regards,
Gary
No @Vinnie Tsoi, cloning is NOT OK!
You are referring to what has been happening in our community with open-source.
FTDI's chips are not open-source.
Smart move by FDTI if they are aiming for bankruptcy. Better way to stay in business is to come up with a newer F-B-C chip.. not kill the popularity they have. Designers will boycott FDTI in new designs..
Selling clone products is common and okay as long as they tell you it is clone and you know what you are buying. Pharmacies offer generic drugs too. There is no right for them to force Microsoft to push out driver software that damage other people's hardware. That's just not right. If they have a problem with the companies making the clones, then take those companies to court like Apple and Samsung. They don't send updates to people phone to disable hardware.
Gary, It looks like I am stuck in the position of defending an act that I don't support... There are two points in your comments that I simply cannot accept and I do believe the facts support:
"They knowingly and willfully distributed software updates that would cripple or destroy anyones property unlucky enough to have a dependency on these."
They did not destroy anything. The fake chips are left in a reversible state and can continue to be used. They are at most disabled temporarily.
"And they went further - they bricked the other manufacturers chip, basically they sabotaged the device itself."
Bricking is poorly defined but can be considered a soft brick or a hard brick. A soft brick is reversible by using only software. A hard brick cannot be recovered from at all or without specialist hardware. The fake chips suffered a soft brick.
I really do not see this as being any more technically difficult that dealing with some of the more annoying device drivers under Windows that don't work properly when first installed. My skills in programming, computing, programming, electronics or any other expert field that relates to this issue are fairly basic. However, I can manage a Google search, read and follow simple instructions so recovering from FTDI's overreach looks easy enough to me. If I can do it, anyone can.
It will be interesting to see how the legal side of this plays out. There have been claims that FTDI has broken some serious laws and, if that is the case, I'm sure they will end up in court soon.
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