FTDI Driver Breaks Hardware Again (eevblog.com)

janoc writes: It seems that the infamous FTDI driver that got famous by intentionally bricking counterfeit chips [NOTE: that driver was later removed] has got a new update that injects garbage data ('NON GENUINE DEVICE FOUND!') into the serial data. This was apparently going on for a while, but only now is the driver being pushed as an automatic update through Windows Update, thus many more people stand to be affected by this.

Let's hope that nobody dies in an industrial accident when a tech connects their cheap USB-to-serial cable to a piece of machinery and the controller misinterprets the garbage data.

Comments

Supply chains

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the reality of supply chains, companies intending to buy the real deal can accidentally buy the knockoffs. Anyone willing to do this(or their previous actions, like bricking devices) is someone I intend to never purchase from, real deal or not.

There are now plenty of competitors to FTDI. Don't buy FTDI- even if you think you're buying the real deal, reality can intervene.

Re: Microsoft's responsibility and WHQL

[ZorinLynx]

Yep, Microsoft should revoke WHQL on future driver versions and refuse to certify FTDI drivers in the future.

This is a blatant violation of trust; end users have no way to know if the FTDI chips in their devices are genuine.

Re:Microsoft's responsibility and WHQL

[FatdogHaiku]

I would imagine Windows Hardware Quality Labs tests the drivers against the hardware they are made to support. Requiring anyone to test real drivers against fake hardware would be a Gordian knot as new knockoff distributors appear and then fade away when someone starts trying to find them. I'm sure the same factory would produce the same knockoff and a "new" distributor would get it into the supply chains.

All that being said, I learned long ago not to let Windows update my hardware drivers, any hardware drivers. I just fixed one the other day where suddenly a favorite resolution on an LCD TV was missing. It took a bit to figure out the latest graphics driver (Intel via Windows update) installed a management program limiting display resolutions. Removed that program (and hid the update) and everything was back to normal.

Of course, in this case it would not matter where you got the update, if your device is counterfeit it gets tagged.