back to article FTDI yanks chip-bricking driver from Windows Update, vows to fight on

Chipmaker FTDI has pulled a driver from Windows Update that could brick devices containing knockoff versions of its USB-to-serial bridge chips, but says it won't back down on its aggressive anti-counterfeiting stance. Earlier this week, hackers from various hardware forums began noticing that FTDI's latest driver would set a …

  1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    Should just

    pop up a message to the user saying fake chips identified and this driver will not work with them, please contact your device vendor for an updated driver.

    Kick the problem to the sloppy QA departments who dont check for the fake kit

    Or more likely, the senior management when faced with paying $30 for geniune chip and $5 for a fake, go with the fake

    1. Vector

      Re: Should just

      All this seems like punishing the customer for the vendor's chicanery, which I find to be bad form. Do you know what USB chip is in that latest bit of kit you've had your eye on? It's easy to say "make'em go back to the shoddy vendor" but the customers probably had no idea and are now put out, probably with little recourse.

      Not saying knockoff are ok, but this is a really ham-handed way to deal with the problem.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Should just

        "All this seems like punishing the customer for the vendor's chicanery, which I find to be bad form."

        It is indeed both. But that's business as usual these days. If the average punter/customer knew how bad they were getting screwed everyday, there would be riots in the streets for weeks.

        Oh wait... that's already happening in some parts of the world.

    2. Will 30
      Boffin

      Re: Should just

      There's no sensible mechanism for a Windows device driver, once installed and running, to 'pop up a message'.

      The fact is that FTDI have made an absolutely enormous investment in their drivers (something like 15+ years of plugging away at it now), and have successfully come to dominate their market largely as a result of that investment. It seems legitimate that they should try to interfere with those who seek to freeload on that hard work.

      Of course, Microsoft could have trivially produced a sensible user-mode solution to the problem of low-data-rate odd-ball USB devices (i.e. most of FTDI's customers) back in the mid 90s, but for some reason they didn't.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Should just

        There's no sensible mechanism for a Windows device driver, once installed and running, to 'pop up a message'.

        A problem Microsoft could help with. Surely the driver can write to a log for the technical people amongst us as an interim solution?

        Of course, Microsoft could have trivially produced a sensible user-mode solution to the problem of low-data-rate odd-ball USB devices (i.e. most of FTDI's customers) back in the mid 90s, but for some reason they didn't.

        Probably because they thought the money was in making things faster (allegedly) while ignoring the reasons these simpler interfaces are still popular.

        Still, this is a step in the right direction. I'm not saying they should support third party components, but at least they're not tampering with third party components now. There aren't too many options that don't leave the end customer exposed to the cross-fire unfortunately, but minimising this as much as possible while allowing the dodgy manufacturers to "make right" their wrongdoing sounds like the best approach.

      2. ckm5

        Re: Should just

        FTDI may have made an enormous investment, but it is legal in both the US & EU to clone hardware for compatibility reasons. Analysis of the actual chips reveal that the clones contain zero FTDI IP, they are only emulating the interface. Now, they may be _labeled_ FTDI on the outer (human visible) case, but the driver would have no way of knowing that.

        What they did is not only morally reprehensible, but deliberately damaging a user's computer equipment is a crime in most parts of the world and could be a very, very serious crime depending on who it is that owns the damaged equipment.

        The net result of this is that quite a lot of designers and design teams are re-evaluating their use of FTDI's hardware. At least one company has said their entire 17k/year usage will go to a different vendor.

        1. Anonymous Dutch Coward

          Re: Should just

          Well, if there's no stolen IP involved in the chip itself - good for them. However, faking FTDI logos etc is still trademark infringement. Of course, fairly tough for a driver to detect...

          Agreed with your argument about damaging other people's hardware being bad etc.

      3. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Should just

        "It seems legitimate that they should try to interfere with those who seek to freeload on that hard work."

        Yes, through legal proceedings against the counterfeiters, NOT the end customer who has no idea what any of it even means except now their stuff has stopped working through no fault of their own.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: Should just

          Downvote? For supporting customers' rights?

          Good to know the corp shills are reading El Reg and the comments as well! Good on ya El Reg!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Should just

      The problem with that is that they are using a bug in their own hardware. They have no way to tell theirs from fakes. At a simple level, when they send a command to in effect brick, their device ignores it. the knock off devices do not.

  2. Haku

    Agreed.

    I don't have a problem with them putting up a notification to the user that they're trying to use a fake chip with official drivers and that it won't work anymore, but silently making the fake chip inert without telling the end user what was happening is just wrong.

  3. Ben Burch

    Seems to me that this is in violation of the law.

    18 U.S. Code § 1030 (a)(5)(A) "(a) Whoever— (5) (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; ... shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section"

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      a. there is no damage, the PID in the chips ROM is simply set to 0 instead of the FTDI PID the driver wants.

      b. it is not done to a (protected) computer but to a connected device

      c. the process is (quite easily) reversible. Just reprogram the required PID into the chip using FTDIs config toolset. Only problem is that next time you connect it the device drivers reset the PID to 0 again.

      1. Ben Burch

        A. From an end-user's perspective, the process control system in his factory worked until this driver made it not work. That is damage.

        B. A "computer system" is the whole works, including peripherals.

        C. Again, to an end user of an embedded application, there is no easy way to fix this. And this failure could have caused additional damage, including harm to persons. And I say this because I have seen a number of factory floor systems that used USB->RS232 widgets, presumably from these folks.

        1. imanidiot Silver badge

          easy to fix for an typical end user, no. Easy to fix to anybody with some knowledge of electronics, like the vendor, yes. The process control system in his factory probably keeps working, the FTDI chip handles communication with a computer for diagnostics or readout, but only performs control functions in terribly designed systems.

          Harm to persons from an RS232 widget going bad??? Seriously? I've had these cables go bad from just being looked at funny. These things are just not EVER used in a function where they are responsible for human safety. EVER. And if they are you have bigger problems than a driver borking a cable. (Most cables would be unaffected anyway)

          On top of that, NO there is no damage. The cable stops working with the official FTDI drivers. Thats it. Drivers which clearly state in their EULA/TOS only support official FTDI chips. It's entirely possible this means some people won't be able to use their widgets again with these drivers. I will agree its a very hamfisted way of handling things. I'll even agree its an arsehole move from FTDI. I am however NOT convinced it would constitute legal damage

          1. Ben Burch

            I think you'd be amazed at the crudeness of some of the safety critical systems in some factories.

            1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

              I agree about the crudeness of some safety critical systems. The word "system" is at least as significant as the other two. It is never a good idea to poke active systems, IP infringements or not. They should fail safe but to see what may happen just look at Chernobyl.

            2. IvyKing

              @Ben Burch

              Anyone who would not bother to check that they were using genuine FTDI parts on a safety critical system is being even more of a scheisskopf than FTDI. Then again, anyone using Windows in a safety critical system has more than a few screws loose.

          2. ckm5

            RS232 is used everywhere in industrial automation

            and quite a lot of it is now using USB -> RS232 as a bridge from modern control systems to legacy stuff. You could EASILY damage an industrial line by bricking that bridge and it could potentially result in an even worse set of cascading problems.

            Now, I say potentially because most automation engineers would not rely on any one thing for supervision/control, but there was a time when things were much more lax. Even now, commercial pressures can result in some really, really sketchy implementations.

            1. david 12 Silver badge

              Re: RS232 is used everywhere in industrial automation

              And for that reason, we would be very glad to have notification if we were supplied with and using fake hardware.

              No, I don't have a problem with fake hardware dissappearing in a puff of acrid smoke. We bin fake hardware when we are lumped with it.

      2. Adrian Midgley 1

        yes damage

        Yes crime I think in UK.

        IANAL

      3. Andus McCoatover
        Windows

        Exqueeze me, but...

        "there is no damage, the PID in the chips ROM is simply set to 0 instead of the FTDI PID the driver wants"

        Or:

        "There is no damage, on detecting a non-licenced copy of XXX the program simply executed " cd / && rm -rf * "...

        No damage either way. Or is there?

        1. imanidiot Silver badge

          Re: Exqueeze me, but...

          In the second case it also deletes data completely unrelated to the function of the device or the driver. So yes, there is a difference

    2. JP19

      "knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command,"

      It seems the device knowing caused the transmission of fake VID and PID codes to the computer which resulted in damage to itself - justice :)

      I said before if you don't want FTDI drivers messing with your device then don't program your device with VID and PID requesting FTDI drivers to be loaded.

    3. ecofeco Silver badge

      Exactly Ben Birch. Because it IS a violation of the law.

      Yet once again, this will be a case of "you break the law, you go to jail." Big corporation breaks the law? "Oops, my bad."

  4. imanidiot Silver badge

    Not exactly recent

    This problem of pin compatible, stamped as FTDI (and not actually visually distinguishable from the real deal) chips have been around for ages. Some enterprising chinese vendors are even simply using mask programmable generic chips for this purpose. Dodgy as hell but for non demanding applications they more or less work. In fact, most non-FTDI FTDI chips on the market are packaged to look exactly like the real thing, not just behave like it.

    Problem with buying stuff from china is that the first 200 parts might have genuine parts, and the last 1.999.800 parts use counterfeit chips. Unless a reseller actually desolders the parts, decaps them and takes a look under a microscope they are just not going to notice the difference. And what is a western company going to do once they find out? Sue them? Good luck under the Chinese legal system. Chinese manufacturers have no qualms about substituting a 2 dollar part for a 1.99 dollar part if it means they get some extra profits. And if the customer won't notice, who cares.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    intentional or unintentionally?

    Unimplemented firmware code in counterfeit chips for setting pid and did. Or a deliberate bricking of cheap tat?

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: intentional or unintentionally?

      Since FTDI has pretty much admitted to it, and the code itself leaves little to the imagination, it's quite certainly intentional.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: intentional or unintentionally?

        LInls to both?

  6. Mage Silver badge

    do so in a non-invasive way

    At least FTDI responded quickly and changed their mind on the extreme solution. Good.

    I wonder what they will try next?

    I have sympathy for FTDI's problem, just not the solution of setting USB ID to zero. The consumer can't tell

    a) exactly what they are buying

    b) what happened,

    In general, in the EU, the CE mark scheme is buggered.

  7. Donald Becker

    The claim that there is "no damage" is wildly incorrect.

    Erasing the PID and VID makes the device non-functional. In most cases it is not economically reasonable to repair the damage. So it's effectively destroying the attached device.

    FTDI might feel that they have some IP beef with work-alike chips. There is a legal process for testing that theory and pursuing a remedy. I expect that they would lose in court, since these chips aren't distributing a copyrighted driver (they are working with the stock FTDI driver), are very unlikely to use a copied mask set (it's easier to design from scratch) and probably don't infringe a valid patent. FTDI probably made the same assessment, since we don't see a series of infringement suits.

    Instead FTDI has gone vigilante, destroying competitors parts. (This isn't something done by accident, overwriting the basic configuration is intentionally complex.) This certainly opens them to civil liability, probably criminal liability and drags Microsoft right in there with them.

    I'm hoping that Microsoft comes out with a strong statement and matching sanctions. They've made a big deal of WHQL certification, extensive testing and driver signing. This was either a failure of their process, or a demonstration that driver qualification nothing but business leverage.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      @Donald Becker

      "I expect that they would lose in court,"

      Why? If the fakes have FTDI's logo etc on them then it's just the sort of thing trademark legislation is intended to deal with. I don't know about your jurisdiction but in the UK Trading Standards legislation could be used to protect customers.

      1. razorfishsl

        Re: @Donald Becker

        Problem is , that until now the customers did not know they had been sold a Duck….

        Really FTDI should just have disabled the driver after all they would be within their right, then force the USB consortium to deal with the stolen PID.

        I would expect a lot of EBAY customers being ready to make claims against EBAY and PP once these new drivers get established.

      2. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: @Donald Becker

        Dr Sin Tax "If the fakes have FTDI's logo etc on them..."

        And what if they don't? As mentioned many times already, the driver can't see the logo printed on the package.

        For products produced in China, there would be no need to violate any of FTDI's IP whatsoever to build a product that works with FTDI's driver. It's a compatible chip, within a gadget, period.

        A simple USB to Serial driver of this magnitude is only a month's work, so worth about $25k fully burdened. Not including all the chip detection and disabling code. Even if I'm off by 10x, the point stands. Me thinks that FTDI is moaning a bit too much about their "massive" IP "investment".

        I feel sorry for them, having a product that be so easily replication using a cheap uC. But my sympathy is reduced due to their misbehaviour.

        1. Steve 129

          Re: @Donald Becker

          Unfortunately you are wrong. The VID/PID combination is as much a claim to be FTDI as printing it on the package.

    2. JP19

      "Erasing the PID and VID makes the device non-functional"

      The VID and PID claim the device is a specific FTDI product. FTDI drivers detected that it wasn't an FTDI product at all and corrected the invalid PID so the device would not incorrectly request FTDI drivers to be loaded again. The FTDI drivers are only licensed for use on genuine FTDI products.

      Under windows the device never was functional because there are no legitimate drivers for it, Yes there is a small lame argument that plugging your fake device claiming to be something it is not into a Windows box will result in it subsequently not working with open drivers on a Linux box.

      "I'm hoping that Microsoft comes out with a strong statement and matching sanctions. They've made a big deal of WHQL certification, extensive testing and driver signing. This was either a failure of their process, or a demonstration that driver qualification nothing but business leverage."

      Just lol - FTDI submit their drivers and hardware for testing and pay for it. Do you really think they should also be responsible for testing all the fakes and clones because they have FTDI stamped on them or use a VID allocated to FTDI by the USB-IF?

      FTDI have no problem with competitors - they have a problem with products pretending to be manufactured by FTDI which abuse and tarnish their good reputation and use their drivers without license.

      1. chris 17 Silver badge
        FAIL

        @jp19

        1) why are they deliberately tampering with stuff they didn't produce or sell?

        2) if their driver borks my fake chip, once I discover what's happened and get the repair app, what pid and vid settings did my chip have so I can restore it?

        3) without destroying and forensically analysing my cable and chip, how do I know I have a fake?

        4) FTDI should have just released a detector tool for consumers to verify their kit report fakes and procure real ones.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          @chris17 - they aren't tampering, you are. You are trying to use an FTDI driver with someone else's chip. If you used the fake's own driver with the fake part there is no issue.

        2. Steve 129

          And just what good would a 'fake detect' tool do??? Seriously, do you think ANYONE who found a fake chip would do anything at all about it?

          FTDI should simply refuse to work with fake chips. Customers would still be left with non-working products but at least they could send them back to whomever they purchased them from.

      2. heyrick Silver badge

        "The FTDI drivers are only licensed for use on genuine FTDI products."

        There is a world of difference between legitimately refusing to work with clone parts (something FTDI has a history of) and intentionally destroying said clone parts.

        I put "destroying" in bold above because it is worth asking yourself how many average Windows users are going to even understand what EPROM VID reprogramming means, never mind how to fix it.

        Oh, and for industrial process control stuff, the maintenance guys where I work are not geeks. They know how to fix machines, they know how to use software. Anything in between the two is a rip-out-and-replace job. None of them know what JTAG is (yes, I asked), as that level of interaction is not a part of their job. Hence, for them too, if they were using Windows with clone chips, that recent update would have "bricked" their hardware. [thankfully they don't use Windows, it is all PLC devices; otherwise the fallout of losing all of the device comms would cost serious amounts of money per day plus make utter havoc with the production scheduling and order completion]

        1. Steve 129

          And just how would 'bricking' be any different to 'simply not work' for someone like this???

          The only people who the difference actually means anything to are technically savvy people.

          If a USB-serial stops working most people will simply throw it in the bin and buy a new one, perhaps complaining to their supplier in the mean time that this is the 7th one which doesn't work.

    3. david 12 Silver badge

      Erasing the PID and VID makes the device non-functional.

      Erasing PID and VID makes the device functional, and non infringing. The PID and VID are, at the device level, the claim that it is an FTDI chip. The chip can still do everything it could yesterday, except claim to be an FTDI chip.

  8. moonrakin

    Tired of fake sh1t

    I sympathize with FTDI - being a regular consumer / integrator of USB<>Serial stuff , chip fakery is a real PITA since the assholes regularly make devices that don't work properly when pushed - "they" even fake the Prolific cheapo USB serial chips......

    I'd put a bounty on the vendors and importers with a free FTDI chipped replacement part for every scrote dobbed in.

    CE = "China Export" ;-/

    Even the Chinese are pissed orf with non working fakes.

    I pay a premium that I'm entirely happy with for FTDI parts - because they work very well - as opposed to Prolific parts which are so compromised by fakes that using one is like Russian roulette with 5 bullets.

    String 'em up - ditto for the importers / resellers of fake flash memory.

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: Tired of fake sh1t

      I don't know why it's so difficult to fake these chips. It's a basic USB1.1 interface at one side and a bog-standard serial at the other. This isn't cutting-edge stuff - its 90s-tech. Even a knockoff manufacturer should be able to make one that works.

      1. Donald Becker

        Re: Tired of fake sh1t

        "I don't know why it's so difficult to fake these chips. It's a basic USB1.1 interface at one side and a bog-standard serial at the other. This isn't cutting-edge stuff - its 90s-tech. Even a knockoff manufacturer should be able to make one that works."

        It's not difficult to make a work-alike chip. FTDI checked for a buglet in their own design to distinguish their own chips from work-alike chips.

        This demonstrates that the work-alike chips are actually independent implementations, not die or gate-by-gate copies.

      2. John Tserkezis

        Re: Tired of fake sh1t

        "I don't know why it's so difficult to fake these chips."

        It's in the results. FTDI gear works, cheap chinese crap doesn't.

        I've bashed my head against the wall on the cheap stuff enough, and I'm entirely over it. For every example of "It works fine for me" I can site a number of examples that don't.

  9. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Unofficial position

    "The Reg asked Microsoft whether it had any official position on hardware vendors using drivers to enforce intellectual property concerns, but Redmond declined to comment on policy."

    Microsoft may not have an official position. But there's numerous cases where in Linux, some driver will work with a range of devices... sometimes it's multiple OEMs using the same chips, sometimes it's clones and knockoffs; whereas in Windows, you could end up with a seperate driver for each and every device in these cases. In some cases it's clear that one OEM's driver and the next OEM's driver is just the same, they are just getting an OEM driver and putting their device ID in; sometimes, not at all. Usually these clone and knockoff vendors also have an independently-written driver that is missing a few features or has a few bugs.

    In other words, having a driver damage hardware? I'm sure Microsoft would not condone that. But, I don't expect FTDI's Windows drivers to keep supporting clones and knockoffs, they put a lot of effort into the Windows drivers. Linux, on the other hand, I'm sure will follow the tradition of supporting as much as possible; in addition, the in-tree FTDI driver thanks FTDI for providing protocol information, but it appears FTDI were not the ones to actually develop this driver.

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Unofficial position

      One must use an older driver to work with the work-alike chips. That's fair.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like Microsoft called them to the carpet on this

    I'm sure they don't want to be seen as responsible for delivering updates that break user's hardware, especially when said users will have no idea their hardware is "counterfeit".

  11. RedneckMother

    Question - what about MS folk who already installed?

    Please excuse my non-MSedness. What about the folk who already installed the "withdrawn" driver?

    Will their systems revert to the non-borked driver, or must they jump through some flaming hoops to revert it manually?

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: Question - what about MS folk who already installed?

      Flaming hoops. It should be possible to reprogram the chips, but you'd need to be up-to-date enough with tech news to realise what's happened, and know enough about USB to perform the procedure.

      From the perspective of most users, this wouldn't even look like an act of sabotage. You just plug your USB device in, it stops working, it won't work after that. The obvious explanation is that it broke down - who would have reason to suspect otherwise?

      1. Anon5000

        Re: Question - what about MS folk who already installed?

        Part of that long list of resurrection instructions includes running an EXE file from FTDI. So you have to trust an EXE from the very people who killed your device with software in the first place.

        Like you say, most users of devices that stopped working will have no idea why unless they keep up with tech news and those who do may not have the expertise or confidence to attempt to fix it, if they can actually find the instructions. Even with el reg pointing to FTDI's tools page, I was unable to see which tool was needed for the job.

        A complete clusterfuck yet FTDI are determined to keep going and continue to keep devices not working under the most used OS in the world, On top of that they have been totally unapologetic. They still think it's ok to stop consumers hardware working.

      2. TonyHoyle

        Re: Question - what about MS folk who already installed?

        Indeed I actually had this happen last week. I had a USB->Serial I'd been using in linux, and for a specific application needed to plug it into windows. Instant brick. Windows wouldn't even enumerate it, and neither would linux afterwards.

        I'm fairly technical but I hadn't heard of this 'feature' of the FTDI driver at that point and nothing I could do could poke it back into life, so it went in the bin. It was, as far as I can tell, a 100% genuine cable (bought from an established site, not ebay) so it was a false positive too.

        In future I'll ask what chipset is used and stick to PL2303, as they've never failed on me.

        1. Steve 129

          Re: Question - what about MS folk who already installed?

          Yeah...OK... it was a false positive because reputable suppliers don't but cheap crap ever !!!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chinese manufacturing

    Don't outsource your manufacturing to China if you don't want the market flooded with knockoffs. It's as simple as that. You will *NEVER* stop it from occurring as long as you're willing to hand over your IP.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Chinese manufacturing

      TA DA.

      Exactly. Simples.

      Upvoted.

    2. JeffyPoooh

      Re: Chinese manufacturing

      You missed the recent tech news where a "fake" "cloned" "FTDI" chip was decapped and studied.

      It was a different work-alike design. Using a uC. A from-scratch design. No FTDI IP included, except perhaps the fake logo printed on the package.

      So your point is valid, but perhaps not applicable to this case.

      1. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: Chinese manufacturing

        "It was a different work-alike design. Using a uC. A from-scratch design. No FTDI IP included, except perhaps the fake logo printed on the package."

        And most probably the same vendor and device IDs as the FTDI chip. This is in (properly written drivers) what controls which driver gets loaded. I'm pretty sure that violates the USB Implementers Forum license. If you build your own gizmo, fine. But go get your own IDs and write (and test) your own drivers.

  13. Anonymous Dutch Coward
    Mushroom

    Engaging? Prevent? Doublespeak lives!

    "Our engineering team is engaging with FTDI to prevent these problems"

    1. Would that be engaging as in engaging in hand-to-hand combat with cutlasses to avoid future problems.... terminally?

    2. What problems are these exactly? AFAIU, the driver did what it was supposed to do: disable illegal ripoffs of FTDI chips. Not that I particularly like that idea, but the amount of corporate doublespeak in this short statement is astronomical...

    How about if Microsoft stipulate "thou shalt not fry other people's hardware using a driver" as a rule for driver submissions?

  14. DropBear
    Terminator

    FTDI's problem is they seem to be delusional enough to think they can just go and rip out the spine of a jaywalker (whether or not he was walking on their lawn) and then keep standing next to the mauled body with a victorious smile, still being "the good guys". Taking justice into your own hands with zero regard to the cost or the collateral damage is always an option, but they should have been aware it is usually *frowned upon*.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Best metaphor of the week

      "rip out the spine of a jaywalker"

      Poetry. Seriously.

      Someone needs to figure out how to get that line into one of the legal briefs in the case that's sure to come along in this scandal.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. dead FTDI232BM

    Yup, one bricked chip here. :-( Ironically this was on a £95 (in 2010) PIC programmer that previously worked fine, and it does again now I reset the PID to 0000 on the older driver.

    Suspect chip has FTDI FT232BM 423-1 on it if this helps anyone.

    So obviously it was their fault it broke in the first place.

    Anecdotal reports of bricked 3D printers are doing the rounds on H-a-D and coincidentally one of my two Uno R3's seems to have gone "Strange Loop" and no longer shows up correctly.

    Unsure if its the same problem but this is on a brand new build of W7.

    1. John Bailey

      Re: Re. dead FTDI232BM

      "Anecdotal reports of bricked 3D printers are doing the rounds on H-a-D and coincidentally one of my two Uno R3's seems to have gone "Strange Loop" and no longer shows up correctly."

      Glad my RepRap is on a Linux box. It's a Melzi from RepRapPro, and it does have an FTDI. But the source means nothing. Anybody can find out they have fake chips the hard way. And I really don't want to have to reinstall and recalibrate a new board unless I absolutely have to.

      Your Uno R3 should not be caught up in this, even if it is a clone. They use the Atmel Mega 16U2 chip instead of an FTDI. So unless FTDI buggered up more than anybody is letting on.. They would be untouched. Different VID and PID entirely. Differnt driver too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Re. dead FTDI232BM

      Can't the people with 3D printers simply 3D print themselves a new chip?

      All the hype says that they can 3D print virtually anything.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re. dead FTDI232BM

        Can't the people with 3D printers simply 3D print themselves a new chip?

        All the hype says that they can 3D print virtually anything.

        Maybe you should use yours to 3D print some common sense…

    3. Steve 129

      Re: Re. dead FTDI232BM

      So go back to the vendor you bought your 200UKP programmer for 95UKP from and tell them you want a REAL one this time !!

      Many of the 3D printer controller boards come from.... wait for it... wait for it... China !!!

  16. 101
    Happy

    A load of brick doo-doo...

    Novel approach: Brick hardware via MS updates. Who would know?

    I suspect updates with a load of brick doo-doo will be common now that the idea is out.

    Management response: "We are so sorry, terribly sorry, we are really, really, really sorry. We are so very, very, very concerned about this. Really we are...concerned and sorry.

    Now go away."

    1. John Bailey

      Re: A load of brick doo-doo...

      "Novel approach: Brick hardware via MS updates. Who would know?"

      Well considering the story you are commenting on.. quite a few people..

      "I suspect updates with a load of brick doo-doo will be common now that the idea is out.

      Management response: "We are so sorry, terribly sorry, we are really, really, really sorry. We are so very, very, very concerned about this. Really we are...concerned and sorry.

      Now go away.""

      Or..

      Get a bollocking from MS for going too far, and stop bricking hardware.... On pain of driver blacklisting on Windows. At which point.. ALL FTDI chips would fail.

      Imagine the scenario.. You do an update, and Windows defender flags the FTDI driver as malware..

      No.. There is unlikely to be a hardware bricking party. Because it's hard enough to get people to update already. And FTDI's actions have not made them very popular outside the usual trolling fraternity.

      Please note.. FTDI have been commanded to pack it in, and do what should have been the maximum extent of their actions in the first place.. Refusal to support non brand chips.

      Mine's the one that will have a new Arduino without a FTDI chip in it next week. Supplied FOC by the company I bought the one with the fake chip from.

  17. ecofeco Silver badge

    My goodness!

    An awful lot of downvotes for commetards expressing support for end user customers' rights.

    Afraid of lawsuits, are we?

    1. Invidious Aardvark

      Re: My goodness!

      I've not been downvoting your comments, though I've just downvoted your whining about being downvoted.

      This isn't Facebook, The Reg has managed to do what Zuck's mighty engineers can't do and have both "like" and "dislike" buttons. People disagree with you sometimes and they let you know.

      Complaining like a child when people disagree with you makes you look like, well, a child complaining that people are disagreeing with them. Also, calling people who disagree with your comments "corporate shills" is heading down the road to Eadon-ville...

  18. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Freetard redux?

    Interesting to real all the comments from folks upset that the manufacturer of the chip and driver is taking an aggressive stance against getting ripped off. Their position seems to be that theft is bad but if they benefit from it then it's OK with them.

    It's like watching your mate bash a guy at the bar and then walking over and drinking his beer.

    1. DryBones

      Re: Freetard redux?

      No, actually it's more like having your television suddenly stop displaying any inputs. Cable, aerial, USB pictures. What's going on? You have no clue, you can't take it back as it's out of warranty. Oh, here's a news story, some company is saying that your tv has a counterfeit part in it, and that as a result they've disabled all its inputs. Have fun with your new flat lamp.

      No matter whose due dilligence failed, they are going to have a very hard time tracking this down, or even determining where those chips came from. Meanwhile, YOUR stuff now does not work, and you have little recourse.

      1. zen1

        @ DryBones Re: Freetard redux?

        Very well put, but to play the opposing advocate for a moment... Let's take designer purses as an example for a moment... Certainly nobody holds the design of a purse as IP, but those who make high end and very desirable product have a problem with people making duplicates of their fabric patterns as well as their logo. Not necessarily the best correlation to a usb device, but the premise is still the same. What about the drug companies who have their products counterfeited? People flock to mexico to obtain cheap drugs, most of which don't have much, if any, active ingredient, when compared to the original product. Sure, it's 99% cheaper... It looks the same, has the same lot identifiers and has the same logo. Yet when the person takes it, there are ill effects.

        Or one I can relate to: I was given a counterfeit 10 dollar bill in change from a purchase. It felt the same, looked identical and to me it looked indistinguishable from a legitimate bill. I took it to the bank to deposit some money, they caught it and not only was I detained until I provided proof that I wasn't a criminal, but my deposit was 10 bucks light.

        I could go on with examples but it would only get tedious for all of us. Let the down voting begin.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @ DryBones Freetard redux?

          In Italy, if you, the customer, buy a fake purse, you, the customer, can be heavily fined.

      2. Steve 129

        Re: Freetard redux?

        Your recourse is to never buy a cheap Shunny TV again !!!

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Freetard redux?

      What planet are you from? A company has deliberately damaged retail customers' bought and paid for equipment, which is plain and simple outright illegal, and you think this is a matter of freetard?

      Wow. Just... wow.

      1. JP19

        Re: Freetard redux?

        "deliberately damaged"

        It didn't damage anything. It fixed a compatibility issue which if you are grasping at straws for a way to blame FTDI also caused another compatibility issue if you subsequently plug the device into a Linux box.

        If the POS the customer bought complied with USB specifications, you know had that little logo on it (which wasn't fake) shit like this wouldn't happen.

        Wow. Just... wow.

      2. david 12 Silver badge

        >which is plain and simple outright illegal,

        I haven't seen charges brought, much less a conviction. I'll wait until I see that before I declare that something is "plain and simple outright" illegal.

      3. Invidious Aardvark

        Re: Freetard redux?

        Good luck proving the deliberately. They wrote a driver that works on their chips.

        Some other people made chips that do what the FTDI chips do and decided to use FTDI's VID/PID to avoid writing their own driver. Unfortunately, they don't react the same way to FTDI's driver as FTDI's chips to, resulting in their PID being set to 0.

        Cue management saying "We didn't pick this up in our testing, but then we wouldn't because we only tested with our chips..." or "We accidentally left in some test code when shipping the new drivers, normal QA didn't pick this issue up because..." etc.

  19. A J Stiles

    We have a word for this sort of behaviour in the U.K.

    Or, rather, two words. "Criminal damage".

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If they're lucky

    All that will happen is FTDI will wind up at the business end of an unfair trade investingation (US FTC and UK Fair Trading Office), the way Sony BMG Music did back in 2007 (remember the "Sony root kit" fiasco?). Having to compensate people for the damage they did and paying a fine around the size of their CEO's salary would be a gift to them, as it was Sony. The FTC here in the states could easily have referred the case to the DoJ for prosecution as a criminal violation of a number of different statutes, including the one referenced further up in these comments. The important thing now is for those who have been damaged (a) file a complaint with their national trade office; (b) start thinking about using an operating platform that's more respectful of their property (or at least one where people are actively looking out for this kind of malicious code).

    1. Tacoboy

      Re: If they're lucky

      Anyone that registers a complaint with the US FTC or UK Fair Trading office is basically saying they illegally downloaded and tried using software they had no license or permission to use and violated copyright law and can be sued by the owner of the software (FTDI).

      So FTDI has to pay damages for a non-functional USB port and FTDI gets a much bigger payout for copyright infringement from the person with a non-functional USB port.

      I bet FTDI can wait to get to court.

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