FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s • Hacker News Board

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#21

Post by tcas » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

wrl wrote: post #17

bri3d wrote: post #7

FTDI have been anti-consumer for years - their last several drivers have introduced intentional instability and Code 10 errors for suspected counterfeit devices. I think this is totally crappy. I see what they're trying to do (create market incentive for consumers to insist on real FTDI chips) but the reality is that it's just screwing over innocent consumers who buy a device.

The FTDI OSX drivers will still randomly cause kernel panics when the device is unplugged and a program still holds an open file descriptor for the serial port. While working with a company which was developing and selling products with FTDI chips in them, we made FTDI aware of this issue and attached many panic logs. It's been about 5 years and they've still yet to actually fix it.

They luckily did fix this in a relatively recent version -- try updating your driver. Still crazy that it shipped in the first place like that.

EDIT: just realized that I was thinking of the PL2303, which had a similar issue, not FTDI.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#22

Post by spiritplumber » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #5

IF this is on purpose and can be proven so, it is most definitely illegal!

All they have to say is "We write our drivers to support our chips, if it messes with other chips that incorrectly identify as ours, that's just the way it went, it'd cost us extra to support them and why should we help our competitors". Practically impossible to prove otherwise.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#23

Post by wyager » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

tcas wrote: post #21

wrl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTDI OSX drivers will still randomly cause kernel panics when the device is unplugged and a program still holds an open file descriptor for the serial port. While working with a company which was developing and selling products with FTDI chips in them, we made FTDI aware of this issue and attached many panic logs. It's been about 5 years and they've still yet to actually fix it.

They luckily did fix this in a relatively recent version -- try updating your driver. Still crazy that it shipped in the first place like that. EDIT: just realized that I was thinking of the PL2303, which had a similar issue, not FTDI.

The newest version I can find on their site says it's from 2012. Link?

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#24

Post by Zigurd » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:18 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #5

IF this is on purpose and can be proven so, it is most definitely illegal!

I wonder why this is voted down. The US has some severe laws against vandalizing computing devices and against unauthorized access. Why wouldn't these laws apply here?

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#25

Post by wrl » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:22 PM UTC

tcas wrote: post #21

wrl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTDI OSX drivers will still randomly cause kernel panics when the device is unplugged and a program still holds an open file descriptor for the serial port. While working with a company which was developing and selling products with FTDI chips in them, we made FTDI aware of this issue and attached many panic logs. It's been about 5 years and they've still yet to actually fix it.

They luckily did fix this in a relatively recent version -- try updating your driver. Still crazy that it shipped in the first place like that. EDIT: just realized that I was thinking of the PL2303, which had a similar issue, not FTDI.

The funny thing is that we reported this sometime in 2009 (might have been 2010), they "fixed it" and released a new version, but the new version only crashed somewhat less often.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#26

Post by fn42 » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

Thanks for the heads up, this will probably affect us car nerds too (I'm sure my cheapo KWP2000 cable has a fake FT232)

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#27

Post by JasuM » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:24 PM UTC

I wonder if anti-virus and anti-malware companies will add this to their black lists.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#28

Post by adamfeldman » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:27 PM UTC

dogecoinbase wrote: post #6

Hackaday has a good short summary of the situation: http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftd...

Elsewhere Hackaday links to a Russian microelectronics company's blog[1], where they decapped real and fake FTDI chips and found that:

"It seems that in this case Chinese designers implemented protocol-compatible "fake" chip, using mask-programmable microcontroller. This way they only needed to redo 1 mask - this is much cheaper than full mask set, and explains a lot of redundant pads on the die. Fake chip was working kinda fine until FTDI released drivers update, which were able to detect fake chips via USB and send only 0's in this case. It was impossible to foresee any possible further driver checks without full schematic recovery and these hidden tricks saved FTDI profits."

[1]: http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supere...

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#29

Post by rainforest » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:30 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #22

dmitrygr wrote: post #5

IF this is on purpose and can be proven so, it is most definitely illegal!

All they have to say is "We write our drivers to support our chips, if it messes with other chips that incorrectly identify as ours, that's just the way it went, it'd cost us extra to support them and why should we help our competitors". Practically impossible to prove otherwise.

They have a track record of trying to fingerprint and screwing with counterfeits, so it would appear there's evidence the driver doesn't happen to disable counterfeits, but actively disables them. To me there's a fuzzy distinction (possibly not reflected in law) between software that breaks when you make it do stuff you didn't design, versus having it attack things you don't want it to work with.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#30

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Oct 22, 2014, 6:31 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #22

dmitrygr wrote: post #5

IF this is on purpose and can be proven so, it is most definitely illegal!

All they have to say is "We write our drivers to support our chips, if it messes with other chips that incorrectly identify as ours, that's just the way it went, it'd cost us extra to support them and why should we help our competitors". Practically impossible to prove otherwise.

"All they have to say is "We write our drivers to support our chips, if it messes with other chips that incorrectly identify as ours, that's just the way it went, it'd cost us extra to support them and why should we help our competitors"."

Buzz, thanks for playing. :)

That won't get them out of discovery for various torts, and the discovery (emails, code, etc) is likely to show they did this on purpose.

It's not practically impossible, it's trivially easy to disassemble and see if it does this on purpose. Then you argue it to a jury, and it's going to look really really bad for FTDI.