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FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#121

Post by mhandley »

0x0 wrote: post #19

I hope this causes a major and publicly visible malfunction in some important device/installation/machinery, of course with no harm done to any persons, but enough of an embarrasment to really set an example, so no vendor will think of pulling tricks like these in the future. Takeaway lesson: End users should never touch anything remotely FTDI-like, since it's probably impossible to verify if the device is genuine or…

Well, that didn't take long! Arduino Nano's on Ebay are already starting to ship with the CH340G instead of the FTDI clone. Way to go FTDI - pissed off your end users and caused manufacturers to move to a completely different chipset. That worked out well for you didn't it? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nano-V3-0-ATmega328-16M-Micro-cont...

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#122

Post by sdrothrock »

cschneid wrote: post #116

Can somebody give me the background here? What is a FTDI FT232s? It appears to be a fairly low level USB controller chip? Is this chip (or its ilk) in every kind of usb device? What is the impact of this? Most of this article dives in with a fair bit of preexisting knowledge - can somebody fill me in?

It's a USB-serial chip. The most common device I can think of that it shows up in is USB modems.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#123

Post by rshm »

jjoonathan wrote: post #43

Does anyone know of good FTDI alternatives? Are there any clone makers that are relatively legit (i.e. they put their actual brand name on the chip, they support drivers, etc)? At $4.50 a pop for bog-standard bit-banging in a day and age where you can get ARM M4 SoCs for $2.75 a pop (n=1 prices) I would think FTDI would have more above-the-table competition than they do. Is the subterfuge required for illegitimate cl…

I have not designed for FTDI and new in embedded desings but, for USB interfacing cypress PSoCs have served me well till now. They have dedicated USB chips as well.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#124

Post by npsimons »

simias wrote: post #104
npsimons wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this causes a major and publicly visible malfunction in some important device/installation/machinery, of course with no harm done to any persons I actually hope that this does cause an event drastic enough so that FTDI will have blood on its hands that ends in jail time for management and engineers. I don't want to see anyone hurt, especially not innocent third parties, but fuck FTDI, fuck the management who o…

Come on, take a deep breath. We're talking about bricking a serial to USB chip, not something worth shedding blood really. As far as unethical behavior by corporation is concerned I really not think it's even noteworthy.

We're talking about bricking a serial to USB chip, not something worth shedding blood really.

We're talking infrastructure: if this was a civil engineer designing a road to spontaneously create potholes that would flatten tires on certain brands of vehicles, they'd be put in the slammer post haste. FDTI has no idea where their chips and drivers will end up, and as designers of such low-level infrastructure type devices, it is criminally negligent to intentionally brick hardware. If I designed a file I/O library to randomly corrupt data when used on Windows, I'd be criminally negligent.

As far as unethical behavior by corporation is concerned I really not think it's even noteworthy.

Destroying other people's hardware to try to ensure your profits? No, not unethical or noteworthy at all.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#125

Post by ryandrake »

geographomics wrote: post #107
Someone1234 wrote: post #38

Microsoft should revoke the driver's signature via their next CRL update, so that it refuses to install (effectively making the drivers unsigned). It is acting maliciously and will break consumer's hardware, even hardware which doesn't contain any FTDI chips. If FTDI have an issue with a company ripping off their IP then go sue that company. But what they're doing is catching consumers in the firing line, who will wi…

Can we be sure that FTDI has programmed their driver with malicious intent? It may be that this an accidental side-effect of using counterfeit hardware with a genuine driver. Without access to the source code or a well-reversed disassembly of the FTDI driver, and a good grasp of the logic used in the counterfeit chip, one cannot be certain about this. And surely not to the extent of urging Microsoft to revoke driver…

It shouldn't matter what their intent was. If the new version of a network driver accidentally started DDOSing servers, it should also be pulled, regardless of whether the vendor did it on purpose.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#126

Post by JackC »

It's interesting to consider from a legal perspective exactly why this isn't something a company is allowed to do. (Assuming the company did in fact intentionally damage people's chips, reversibly or not -- sounds like we don't know for sure yet?)

- Intentionally sabotaging someone's stuff, legally, is more or less the same as intentionally taking it. Keying a car and driving it away might have different names but are on the same scale.

- There ain't no self help. If you think someone else's stuff should actually be your stuff, your path is through a court.

- We don't fix things with injunctive relief that can be fixed with money. When Apple proves that Samsung violated a patent or vice versa, we don't collect and burn all the infringing phones, we just make someone cut a check. Because we are not idiots.

- The "someone" who cuts the check is Samsung or Apple, not their customers. As far as I know no one's managed to go after end users, even in extreme cases like a $10 designer handbag where the buyer obviously knows it's not real. (And it's at best unclear whether going after the buyers would make any sense, even in those extreme cases -- if someone pays knockoff prices for a knockoff product, it's the seller and not the buyer who has ill-gotten gains. There might be some additional reputation damage and lost profits that the buyer is complicit in, but it makes a lot more sense to me -- and apparently everyone else -- to make the seller pay for those as well.)

- When you do go after the seller of trademarked goods and want to seize those goods, we actually have a procedure for that -- Section 34 of the Lanham Act.[1] Which includes a whole bunch of protections like swearing out an affidavit, getting permission from a judge, informing the attorney general, posting a bond to cover damages, conducting the seizure through government agents, and keeping the seized items in the custody of the court. It's very much unlike showing up at someone's house and breaking their stuff.

(I am a lawyer; I am not a trademark lawyer; I just googled some stuff based on vague memories from law school to write this.)

[1] http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1116.html

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#127

Post by rcxdude »

makomk wrote: post #86
joezydeco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a commodity because they're all using counterfeit FTDI and Prolific chips.

The counterfeit FTDI chips are apparently reimplemented from scratch using a completely different design, one based around a USB microcontroller of some kind. They're a commodity because they're really easy to create.

Yeah, I never really understood how they justified the prices on their chips when you could literally code the same thing in a week or two on a micro which was half the price. About the only reason I see to use them is they have quite neat pre-made cable assemblies.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#128

Post by wtallis »

michaelt wrote: post #120
wtallis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone, in demanding the lowest price no matter what (all the way up the supply chain) bears part of the blame. Your use of the word "blame" implies that you think there's some wrongdoing on the part of someone other than FTDI. As far as I can see, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the production and use of these clone chips except that they are being labeled with FTDI's trademark. They're piggybacking on FTD…

Your use of the word "blame" implies that you think there's some wrongdoing on the part of someone other than FTDI. I don't see it as particularly controversial to say that, when someone selling an item claims it's a certain brand, I expect that to be the truth. For example, if I buy an apple iphone I expect to get an apple iphone and if the supplier instead sends me a fake I regard that as wrongdoing on the part of…

Right. That would be the trademark infringement I mentioned. But aside from that, the fakes get the job done. Aside from who ends up getting the revenue, it's basically no different than if FTDI started producing a new revision of the product that had a different internal layout. Accidental second-sourcing doesn't really hurt anyone other than the first source. Everyone downstream of whoever bought the counterfeits is innocent, and even the company that procured the counterfeits has probably only made forgivable mistakes given that the counterfeits are near-perfect substitutes. The supplier of the counterfeits is guilty of trademark infringement, but is otherwise fulfilling all their obligations to provide the required component.

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#129

Post by userbinator »

jjoonathan wrote: post #43

Does anyone know of good FTDI alternatives? Are there any clone makers that are relatively legit (i.e. they put their actual brand name on the chip, they support drivers, etc)? At $4.50 a pop for bog-standard bit-banging in a day and age where you can get ARM M4 SoCs for $2.75 a pop (n=1 prices) I would think FTDI would have more above-the-table competition than they do. Is the subterfuge required for illegitimate cl…

Someone in the linked thread recommended the Cypress CY7C65213 and posted a link where Cypress claims it is a direct pin-for-pin compatible replacement that doesn't need proprietary drivers: http://www.cypress.com/?rID=83118

It's also cheaper; $2.44 for one and it goes down to $1.44 for 2500: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/CY7C65213-32LTXI/CY...

Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232s

#130

Post by tmm »

msandford wrote: post #114
nitrogen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the CP210x support operation at exactly 250kbaud? I've previously recommended FTDI-based adapters for DMX-512 control of lights. The other adapters I tried can only do 232k or 256k or some fixed number, not 250k.

Looks like it: http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/usbtouart/Pages/usb... USB 2.0 compliant, full-speed (12 Mbps) No external crystal required Up to 1024 Bytes of EEPROM or OTP ROM User-programmable custom Baud rates Supports all modem interface signals Baud Rates: up to 2 Mbps Industrial temperature –40 to +85 °C Datasheet: http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/CP21... UPDATE: On this PDF (pag…

The CP2102 - CP2104 will do 250k; the CP2101 will not. Also, the CP2102 and CP2103 have a fixed table of rates (one of which is 250k) while the CP2104 can do arbitrary rates (within reason, see section 6.1 for details: http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/cp21...).
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