FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??

[free_electron]

wow. what a bunch of fanboi's here.

here is my view :

- I agree FTDI needs a slap on the wrist for delivering a driver that bricks stuff, that isn't theirs, deliberately.
- On the other hand: FTDI is perfectly allowed to refuse to let someone steal the fruit of their labour. USB has always been a pain in the butt to implement. They were the pioneers in making it simple. They just could have done it a bit differently (a popup saying the driver is incompatible with the attached device and refusing to connect. done . this would have people go to the device manufacturer requesting working drivers. so they can clean up their mess)

- i will happily continue using FTDI devices. they work. if all i need is a simple uart mode i may stuff in a silabs or cypres but most oftenly i use the MPSSE and bitbang functionality. NONE of the others have that.
- counterfeited parts are real. get your stuff from reputable source. if it tanks, go knock on their door : they will set it right.

just my 2 cents. you may disagree/ agree: i don't care. i just voiced my view.

[dannyf]

Seriously your going to ask me to post my bank statement that is pretty odd request to ask. No one should post that kind of information to a public forum PM me and I can meet in person if you want at my place of work.

I wouldn't even respond to that kind of crazy demand. Tell them to go pound sand.

[zapta]

Seriously your going to ask me to post my bank statement that is pretty odd request to ask. No one should post that kind of information to a public forum PM me and I can meet in person if you want at my place of work.

I wouldn't even respond to that kind of crazy demand. Tell them to go pound sand.

It's a sure way to detect forum trolls, just like the witches drowning test.

[(*steve*)]

Seriously your going to ask me to post my bank statement that is pretty odd request to ask. No one should post that kind of information to a public forum PM me and I can meet in person if you want at my place of work.

I wouldn't even respond to that kind of crazy demand. Tell them to go pound sand.

I read the original post (which seems to have disappeared now) and I read it as something other than a demand.  I went back to check but couldn't find it.  I was sure the next words were "just kidding".  It's not a direct quote above, but I wonder if the original post was misunderstood?

[(*steve*)]

It's a sure way to detect forum trolls, just like the witches drowning test.

And who amongst us does not weigh more than a duck?

[a210210200]

I wouldn't even respond to that kind of crazy demand. Tell them to go pound sand.

The only way to stop crazy conspiracies is to show with their own words an indelible contradiction which they will likely ignore and continue going as if it was opinion. The major difference is others can see it for what it is.

[dannyf]

I read the original post (which seems to have disappeared now) and I read it as something other than a demand.

The original post may have disappeared but the quoted text is still available - a good thing, .

Either way, who would be crazy enough to insist on seeing a perfect stranger's bank statements as a pre-requisite to authenticate that stranger's intentions? And if they don't comply, they must be motivated by questionable goals.

That's like telling someone that they must be a murderer because they refuse to chop off their arms to prove their innocence.

It is just nuts.

[all_repair]

Don't you all got school to go, and homework to do?
This isn't a kid forum, or is it? ?

[TheRevva]

Wow, that philosophy wouldn't last two minutes in a proper customer-support organization. How astonishingly clueless about the end-user support world.

Please elaborate on how you think the entire all industries all fields of work end user support world should work. Does everyone get a personal IT support person standing by their side to guide them through the terribly complex process of pointing, clicking, and typing into this strange box the strange person calls a computer?

Which by the way if you want I can do it for you personally for free online to fix the FTDI PID issues if you have any. In IT support if the person is at an ends of their ability then yes people take over but you shouldn't hand hold 100% of the time and must adapt to the situation and person your talking to. For an IT group fixing things like this is peanuts compared to a bad windows update that wasn't caught in deployment testing which can cause many more problems.

I LOVE this thread!!!  I have to 'disappear' from the net for a weekend due to a 'far more important' hobby of mine (drag racing)...  Not only do I come back to find another whole BATCH of politically induced BULLSHIT from 'the paid troll', I also had to waste several HOURS 'fixing' the data-logger connectivity of several VERY high end drag racers (who now consider me to be an absolute 'I.T. deity'...  Go figure!!!).  Naturally, after having remedied their issues, I explained (impartially? Yeah right, they KNOW me better than that!!!) the reasons why their time proven systems had suddenly turned into custard.  The 'news' spread through the venue like an Santa Ana bushfire and they all want me to build them a new USB-RS232C cable that will take the big FTDI question totally out of the equation!  Even the Top Fuellers who already had GENUINE FTDI chips in their systems.....  (Racepak and RPM seem to supply a 'custom' VID / PID on their FTDI equipped cables as do many others).  It's simply not worth them 'risking' a $200k motor on some NASTY $20 cable!
I probably SHOULD be thanking FTDI for the extra business, but in reality, I am NOT an EE...  I just 'hit keys' and electronics is merely a hobby.
Perhaps FTDI needs to mix a bit more Ammonium Nitrate into their Nitromethane next time so they can 'go out in style'....  OKLAHOMA style...
Anyway, I have a bunch more in this thread (from the 'paid trolls')....  Might be more posts from me real soon

Wait wouldn't the fact that your tricking people into paying you money by taking advantage of the news be the very definition of a paid troll? You have a clear conflict of interest in that your directly benefiting by your own admission.

A custom VID/PID part would not be affected by this PID change issue so your in fact lying to your customers to induce them to give you work they don't need done. This is beyond unethical.

It's apparent that you have tragically misread what I have written.  Perhaps english isn't your primary language, so I'll happily forgive you...  (Or perhaps you're just a 'political spin doctor'?)
What I actually typed is quite self evident.
1: "they all want me to build them a new USB-RS232C cable"
Perhaps you misread that by thinking I was actually going to build them the cables they all WANT me to construct?
2: "I probably SHOULD be thanking FTDI for the extra business, but in reality, I am NOT an EE...  I just 'hit keys' and electronics is merely a hobby."
Let me make it crystal clear for you.  "but in reality, I am NOT an EE" means exactly what it says (as does the phrase "electronics is merely a hobby").
It seems likely to me that you have chosen to 'conjure' some image that is totally contrary to what was actually typed?
For all I know, this might be the result of overindulgence in a few extra drams of the finest single malt but I truly don't care.

My 'mission' is solely to warn people of the DANGERS of using ANY FTDI part whether a full blown counterfeit (aka 'illegal' due to the logo or even die copying), a functional if not imperfect clone (which were the majority from the weekend given that the chip was in the 'epoxy blob'), or even a part sourced direct from FTDI)
I've taken the time to plainly demonstrate to a bunch of end users how a malicious piece of software can really 'ruin their day'.
The drag racers I deal with and hugely respect are true 'end users'.  When their cables suddenly stop working they're totally unable to resurrect them.  We're talking about grease monkeys here, not EEs, not I.T. professionals...  These are the type of guys who search the keyboard looking for the 'any' key and cannot decide whether to try 'TAB' or 'ESC' since they both have the right number of letters on the keycap!
The fact that the current debacle was begun by the OEM chip designer releasing what most seem to consider malware into the wild only helps to make those end users even more skeptical.  I demonstrated to many of them (with their full permission) how easy it was to 'brick' a GENUINE chip by changing the VID / PID to make it appear as a Mickey$oft Mouse.  I didn't switch to the external oscillator option on any of them as I still wanted them to be able to use their 'brain dead' hardware until they've changed chip provider.  (i.e. I changed the VID / PID back to 'normal' after performing the 'demonstration').
The reality is that I'm pretty certain that ALL of the available USB-UARTs can be targeted by malicious software.  However, I took the time to explain that the PROBABILITY of their FTDI based devices being targeted is several orders of magnitude larger than for any of the other, more 'sane' chip makers.

It's my expectation that I'll be going through all the SAME crap again next weekend when there's going to be a bunch of EFI ECU equipped vehicles racing.  (Unsurprisingly, these too tend to use a simple RS-232C comms port).

Anyway, you just keep on posting sunshine.  I could do with a few more laughs.

[miguelvp]

@TheRevva,

Tell them they are better off getting real RS232 PCIe boards, they are only about $30 for 2 ports.

Also some motherboards have RS232 headers, you just need the external connector on one of the external slots on the back side external slots.

[TheRevva]

@TheRevva,

Tell them they are better off getting real RS232 PCIe boards, they are only about $30 for 2 ports.

Also some motherboards have RS232 headers, you just need the external connector on one of the external slots on the back side external slots.

I completely concur on a PCIe board, but more often than not in this circumstance, we're talking about a laptop rather than a desktop MoBo with available PCIe slots.
Sure there ARE some cardbus and PCI express serial devices available for the laptop market, but you really need to see the state of some of these laptops.  I'm sure that a few have been 'attacked with a grease gun'.  The likelihood of the PCI Express connector pins remaining intact (and not 'oxidised into submission') by the various petrochemical solvents around them isn't very high.  (I guess that's why some of the teams tend to have half a dozen 'spare' laptops floating about in the transporter?).
My 'gut instinct' is to think that a PCI express card is a LOT more 'fragile' than a USB dongle and would therefore probably 'expire' a lot sooner.  (All of the PCI express outboard connectors I've seen wouldn't last a single drag meeting given the rough handling they'd be subjected to)
(Down here in NZ our teams tend to be far less 'polished' than what you'd expect from a 'John Force' team.  Perhaps that's why I love them so much? LOL)

Nevertheless, thanx HEAPS for the suggestion.

Edit:  Sorry to the forum readers...  I got my terminology a bit wrong in the above text.  I SHOULD have used the term "ExpressCard" where I typed "PCI Express".  Also, I've found a number of ExpressCard offerings that have a proper DB9 connector as the outboard connector.  I've ordered a couple for testing this weekend so we'll see how well they go.  (And before some 'troll' starts accusing me of making money from this FTDI debacle by 'selling' these ExpressCards, the teams that get them will ONLY pay me the price I got them for and then ONLY if they return them 'broken' at the end of the day.  I have _other_ uses intended for them!)

[German_EE]

I agree on the garage environment and the rough handling. I remember seeing the inside of an original IBM PC after it had been inside a tire depot for a few years and there was a layer over a cm deep of tire dust over the motherboard. Fortunately this was before the days of CPU fans but they told me that the power supplies lasted three or four months before failure.

[nctnico]

Don't you all got school to go, and homework to do?
This isn't a kid forum, or is it? ?

If you work for the University Of British Columbia then you have lots of time to hang around on this forum  Sadly we still don't know how much that pays 

[miguelvp]

I used to work at a University as a staff programmer, pay was 1/4 to 1/8 of what you can make in the private market depending how good and how specialized you are, but that was many moons ago.

[Rufus]

I'm getting their new driver marked as a "critical" update in Windows Update now. Microsoft must be pretty pissed off that FTDI made them distribute a malicious, hardware-bricking driver.

The hardware bricked itself because it didn't correctly emulate the hardware it was claiming to be. The FTDI driver treats all hardware the same and could easily claim the operations which fakes brick themselves on may be required by future revisions of their silicon.

I can't say I have seen any ambulance chasers in this or any other thread about the issue. I estimate the chances of FTDI being sued over it are about zero.

[marshallh]

BTW, FTDI have just announced a new USB 3.0 Superspeed FIFO chip.... details to come

If it's less convoluted and cheaper than the FX3, I'm in

[eneuro]

This isn't a kid forum, or is it? ?

Probably piece of cake for Dave to run sql statement like this on its own database, so let creative people learn fast keyboard typing

Code: [Select]

DELETE FROM eevblog_forum
WHERE user='Rufus ' OR user='a210210200' OR .... etc


[zapta]

It's call censorship and it's not desired.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

I don't see why you are calling a210210200 and rufus trolls. I think they have argued their case a lot better than the many people on the other side. And most of the abuse has been against them.
Though I can see why you may think a210210200 is a shill. ie. He is new, he argues so comprehensively and doggedly on one issue.
He has denied that this is the case, so what can you do but argue against him.

Back to topic:
Sometimes you have to accept that people have a different opinion.
As to FTDI being sued, haven't heard anything apart from some drag racers saying they hate FTDI.
As to somebody at FTDI having broken some criminal law, it was just a dream, it never was going to happen.

As to whether FTDI did the wrong thing, it seems clear that the opinion of the forum is yes, I disagree but the weight of opinion is against me.
I think the hardware deliberately and falsely identified itself to be FTDI hardware, it was not chance. So the FTDI driver just changed it's PID to so it would not be loaded by it next time. I think this is the correct course.

A further thing, I don't see why people seem to think getting fake chips (not clones)  from distributors/manufacturers is acceptable, why not name and shame them if you have been given fake chips.
Has anyone actually found fakes loaded onto their boards or bought fake chips from a major distributor?

[Rufus]

A further thing, I don't see why people seem to think getting fake chips (not clones)  from distributors/manufacturers is acceptable, why not name and shame them if you have been given fake chips.
Has anyone actually found fakes loaded onto their boards or bought fake chips from a major distributor?

I get the impression a lot of people here have never bothered to read a delivery note from the likes of Digikey or Element 14. They are certificates of conformity the most basic of which state "I certify that goods are to manufacturers specification."  with a signature. They get certificates of conformity from their suppliers and so on till it gets back to the original manufacturer who should also have certificates of conformity from their material suppliers etc. That is how traceability of parts and a blame trail is established.

Because I don't have ISO 9001 approval I am not sufficiently trusted and some of my customers require me to supply copies of CofCs for all parts I use to make what I supply to them. For such jobs I simply can't buy parts from sources that don't provide CofCs. A lot of quality assurance is bullshit but maintaining traceability and a blame trail isn't. If crap does get into the supply chain it establishes where and as importantly where that crap went to.

I recently had some parts from Farnell which were out of specification - not far but definitely out. After some hassle getting past customer service droids they quarantined their remaining stock, tested some parts themselves and launched an investigation. I doubt I will get to hear the result of that investigation but I am pretty confident they will identify and sort out the problem. They ought to inform other customers who bought from that stock of the issue, but, I have no way of knowing if they did.

[TheRevva]

For the most part, I actually agree with ya HFM...
It's all a very contentious set of circumstances.
The remainder of this post is merely me 'taking the piss' in a quasi light-hearted fashion...  It's intent is PURELY to provoke a smirk.

I'd like to take this opportunity to lay claim to the numbers 7 and 823543 (being 7^7).
From this point forward, anyone making use of those numbers shall be considered to have STOLEN them from me and I'd suggest that any use of them (whether for identification purposes or otherwise), is technically in breach of the EULA that I privately posted onto my bathroom wall.  (ANYONE can request to come and view this EULA, but I'm not expecting a queue of people).
Anyone wishing to arrange an 'EULA viewing opportunity' may have some difficulty.  All my phone numbers contain references to MY digit (7) and I'm actively seeking that all Telco equipment manufacturers around the world strike off this number from their devices.  Furthermore, both my street address _AND_ postcode (that's ZIPcode for you yanks) also contain numerous instances of MY '7' so I am afraid 'snail mail' is out.  My HAM radio license?  Equally affected!  I guess you could try 'smoke signals'?  (I'd prefer people used GENUINE FTDI smoke, but I will grudgingly accept FAKE smoke too on a 'calm day').

P.S.
I would strongly expect that A210210200 will shortly lay claim to the decimal number 696,055,300,608 (since that's what A210210200 equates to after converting back from hex to decimal).  Thank GOODNESS is doesn't include a '7'!!!  I'd have been FORCED to sue!

[TheRevva]

i categorize 'reading a delivery note' into a similar arena to 'reading an EULA'.  The reality is that the VAST majority of people blindly ignore them.  By way of example, I make certain that ALL of my client machines have a suitable AntiVirus software suite installed on them.  It's positively scary to state how many of them click on the 'ignore' button as soon as it pops up with some form of malware warning.
As for ISO-9001 certification, I consider it to be somewhat of a joke.  It's quite plausible that ISO-9001 certification has been dramatically improved since I last looked into it over a decade ago.  Back then, it was completely plausible to attain ISO-9001 certification and have a plant that was consistently producing RUBBISH.  ISO9001 did not CARE whether the end result was good, bad or indifferent.  It simply concerned itself with documenting processes (to the nth degree) and made sure that ALL production was equally good, or equally bad.  I truly hope it's moved forward since then!
At the time, Six Sigma was 'light years' better than ISO-9001, and yet it too was akin to racing a top fuel dragster with 15 spark plugs removed.  (i.e. Let's take some process that's HIGHLY efficient, and do whatever we can to slow it down to a crawl).
A good dose of 'Common Sense' in conjunction with the usual 'market forces' still works wonders for me.  Perhaps FTDI are rapidly learning both of these facets?

[miguelvp]

This has been silly from the get go, now is just even sillier

You can't patent mathematical formulas including just numbers.

However you can trademark a number, like 312 is a Beer brand and the number comes from the phone area code. That doesn't prevent people to have phone numbers with the 312 exchange, but it does prevent others from using the number to name their beer that way.

If you don't want to ever use FTDI so be it, Me I don't care, but other chips might fall into cloners, at least if FTDI prevents clones to use their drivers then that's it for them and other chips will be cloned or the clones be more like the original chip, or just take the time to put your own ID and deploy your own driver.

So spend $5,000 for a VID for 2 years use, or $8,500 if you want to also make use of the USB logo in your product and be done with it.

[TheRevva]

Yep, the thread has (quite rightly IMNSHO), become somewhat of a joke...  (In fact, for some of us, it was somewhat of a joke right from the outset)
That 'joke' status is exactly the reason why I've elected to 'claim ownership' of the numbers '7' and '823543'.  (I hope it put a smile on at least SOME faces?)
BTW, if anyone is willing to pay me US$5000.00, they can 'claim ownership' of any other numbers.  (I'm tempted to put dibs on numbers like PI and 'e' since they're bound to be worth a 'premium price'.  Perhaps I should also claim 22/7 for those 'rationalists' amongst us?).

Each of us will make our own decisions based upon what we have seen and read (in combination with our own unique 'personalities') and life will go on irrespectively.

If nothing else, I'd suggest that FTDI management will think VERY hard of the ramifications of any such future 'releases'.

[a210210200]

Wow, that philosophy wouldn't last two minutes in a proper customer-support organization. How astonishingly clueless about the end-user support world.

Please elaborate on how you think the entire all industries all fields of work end user support world should work. Does everyone get a personal IT support person standing by their side to guide them through the terribly complex process of pointing, clicking, and typing into this strange box the strange person calls a computer?

Which by the way if you want I can do it for you personally for free online to fix the FTDI PID issues if you have any. In IT support if the person is at an ends of their ability then yes people take over but you shouldn't hand hold 100% of the time and must adapt to the situation and person your talking to. For an IT group fixing things like this is peanuts compared to a bad windows update that wasn't caught in deployment testing which can cause many more problems.

I LOVE this thread!!!  I have to 'disappear' from the net for a weekend due to a 'far more important' hobby of mine (drag racing)...  Not only do I come back to find another whole BATCH of politically induced BULLSHIT from 'the paid troll', I also had to waste several HOURS 'fixing' the data-logger connectivity of several VERY high end drag racers (who now consider me to be an absolute 'I.T. deity'...  Go figure!!!).  Naturally, after having remedied their issues, I explained (impartially? Yeah right, they KNOW me better than that!!!) the reasons why their time proven systems had suddenly turned into custard.  The 'news' spread through the venue like an Santa Ana bushfire and they all want me to build them a new USB-RS232C cable that will take the big FTDI question totally out of the equation!  Even the Top Fuellers who already had GENUINE FTDI chips in their systems.....  (Racepak and RPM seem to supply a 'custom' VID / PID on their FTDI equipped cables as do many others).  It's simply not worth them 'risking' a $200k motor on some NASTY $20 cable!
I probably SHOULD be thanking FTDI for the extra business, but in reality, I am NOT an EE...  I just 'hit keys' and electronics is merely a hobby.
Perhaps FTDI needs to mix a bit more Ammonium Nitrate into their Nitromethane next time so they can 'go out in style'....  OKLAHOMA style...
Anyway, I have a bunch more in this thread (from the 'paid trolls')....  Might be more posts from me real soon

Wait wouldn't the fact that your tricking people into paying you money by taking advantage of the news be the very definition of a paid troll? You have a clear conflict of interest in that your directly benefiting by your own admission.

A custom VID/PID part would not be affected by this PID change issue so your in fact lying to your customers to induce them to give you work they don't need done. This is beyond unethical.

It's apparent that you have tragically misread what I have written.  Perhaps english isn't your primary language, so I'll happily forgive you...  (Or perhaps you're just a 'political spin doctor'?)
What I actually typed is quite self evident.
1: "they all want me to build them a new USB-RS232C cable"
Perhaps you misread that by thinking I was actually going to build them the cables they all WANT me to construct?
2: "I probably SHOULD be thanking FTDI for the extra business, but in reality, I am NOT an EE...  I just 'hit keys' and electronics is merely a hobby."
Let me make it crystal clear for you.  "but in reality, I am NOT an EE" means exactly what it says (as does the phrase "electronics is merely a hobby").
It seems likely to me that you have chosen to 'conjure' some image that is totally contrary to what was actually typed?
For all I know, this might be the result of overindulgence in a few extra drams of the finest single malt but I truly don't care.

My 'mission' is solely to warn people of the DANGERS of using ANY FTDI part whether a full blown counterfeit (aka 'illegal' due to the logo or even die copying), a functional if not imperfect clone (which were the majority from the weekend given that the chip was in the 'epoxy blob'), or even a part sourced direct from FTDI)
I've taken the time to plainly demonstrate to a bunch of end users how a malicious piece of software can really 'ruin their day'.
The drag racers I deal with and hugely respect are true 'end users'.  When their cables suddenly stop working they're totally unable to resurrect them.  We're talking about grease monkeys here, not EEs, not I.T. professionals...  These are the type of guys who search the keyboard looking for the 'any' key and cannot decide whether to try 'TAB' or 'ESC' since they both have the right number of letters on the keycap!
The fact that the current debacle was begun by the OEM chip designer releasing what most seem to consider malware into the wild only helps to make those end users even more skeptical.  I demonstrated to many of them (with their full permission) how easy it was to 'brick' a GENUINE chip by changing the VID / PID to make it appear as a Mickey$oft Mouse.  I didn't switch to the external oscillator option on any of them as I still wanted them to be able to use their 'brain dead' hardware until they've changed chip provider.  (i.e. I changed the VID / PID back to 'normal' after performing the 'demonstration').
The reality is that I'm pretty certain that ALL of the available USB-UARTs can be targeted by malicious software.  However, I took the time to explain that the PROBABILITY of their FTDI based devices being targeted is several orders of magnitude larger than for any of the other, more 'sane' chip makers.

It's my expectation that I'll be going through all the SAME crap again next weekend when there's going to be a bunch of EFI ECU equipped vehicles racing.  (Unsurprisingly, these too tend to use a simple RS-232C comms port).

Anyway, you just keep on posting sunshine.  I could do with a few more laughs.

As you said earlier,

Even the Top Fuellers who already had GENUINE FTDI chips in their systems.....  (Racepak and RPM seem to supply a 'custom' VID / PID on their FTDI equipped cables as do many others).  It's simply not worth them 'risking' a $200k motor on some NASTY $20 cable!

This statement is completely false by your own words in bold, a company that uses their own "custom" VID/PID would not be affected by FTDI driver updates and could even use fake chips without being affected because they control which driver it uses. And is why I said your tricking people by telling them a story which doesn't effect them. If an FDA approved blood glucose meter which also uses custom VID/PID they too would not be affected.

And the rest of your post keeps ignoring that fact a reputable company like Racepak is doing all the right things and your just spreading fear uncertainty and doubt. Also you should not manually collide VID/PID with other device drivers you could have corrupted their operating system by accident or caused a BSOD if you want to show it being bricked you should pick a combination which is not being used. (You can look online for tables of VID/PID numbers)