FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update • Hacker News Board

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:51 PM UTC

expr- wrote: post #12

I disagree with the consensus. It's their driver, it operates in a specific way, perhaps responding to possible device output. Using it with non-compatible parts advertising themselves as compatible and any resulting behaviour, including unwanted, is the responsibility of the user. To play it safe, don't use any drivers with incompatible hardware.

That's reasonable, until they start deliberately destroying my property. Then its a civil case. Do we have any evidence either way, deliberate or accidental?

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#22

Post by bri3d » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

Good for them. I mean that. If they want to redesign their driver so it fails to work with non-genuine FTDI chips, go for it. Nobody will judge them. Heck if they want to show a message that informs the user they're using a fake, that's fine too. I think most people seemed to agree that bricking fakes was too far (and also could be considered illegal in some countries/areas). It also negatively impacted innocent part…

What I don't understand is why they don't make the messaging more clear. In their pre-bricking drivers, FDTI caused the counterfeits to fail in confusing and counterintuitive ways, rather than just telling the user that the chip is fake.

As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejecting it!"

A little bit more user notification around "you have a counterfeit FTDI" or, even better, a tool to find out if your FTDI is fake would be a lot better than "oh, you can tell if the chip is fake because it will only work properly with drivers before 2.08.14, otherwise it will randomly crash!"

Prolific do the same thing, but their drivers at least fail to start with a common error code which is easy to Google.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#23

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #18

nsxwolf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should reach out to affected parties and help them replace their destroyed equipment.

No equipment was destroyed by the old driver: the old driver set a word in the firmware of counterfeit devices to zero. All that needs to happen to reverse what some comment-writers are calling "bricking" is to set the word back to its original value. The new version of the driver could probably do that.

Bricking is exactly what you describe - the device is not usable after the driver sabotages it. Bricking is a common description of a device made non-functional by interrupting a firmware upgrade process. It's not destroyed, and can be restored to functionality by special tools. But as far as the user is concerned, the device is broke.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#24

Post by fixermark » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

bri3d wrote: post #22

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

Good for them. I mean that. If they want to redesign their driver so it fails to work with non-genuine FTDI chips, go for it. Nobody will judge them. Heck if they want to show a message that informs the user they're using a fake, that's fine too. I think most people seemed to agree that bricking fakes was too far (and also could be considered illegal in some countries/areas). It also negatively impacted innocent part…

What I don't understand is why they don't make the messaging more clear. In their pre-bricking drivers, FDTI caused the counterfeits to fail in confusing and counterintuitive ways, rather than just telling the user that the chip is fake. As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejectin…

""" As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejecting it!" """

Yep. Believing the consumer cares about your product as much as you do is a line of thinking that's easy for engineers to fall into when their lives and livelihoods depend on the product. It's why smart companies employ someone with the capacity to sit in a more objective position to evaluate the market and public perception.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#25

Post by mwill » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

It's interesting watching this play out with reputable, legal companies.

Something similar happened earlier in the year with Nintendo 3DS flashcards, however the software was not just disabling the flashcard, but would brick the users 3DS.

Their response was essentially, "Yeah? What are you going to do about it?" and promising to replace the 3DS of anyone who could prove they were using a legitimate card.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#26

Post by DigitalJack » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

bri3d wrote: post #22

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

Good for them. I mean that. If they want to redesign their driver so it fails to work with non-genuine FTDI chips, go for it. Nobody will judge them. Heck if they want to show a message that informs the user they're using a fake, that's fine too. I think most people seemed to agree that bricking fakes was too far (and also could be considered illegal in some countries/areas). It also negatively impacted innocent part…

What I don't understand is why they don't make the messaging more clear. In their pre-bricking drivers, FDTI caused the counterfeits to fail in confusing and counterintuitive ways, rather than just telling the user that the chip is fake. As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejectin…

I don't think that is very straight forward. It's easy to know how your device will operate in various conditions. counterfeits can fail in a million unpredictable ways.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#27

Post by HCIdivision17 » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #18

nsxwolf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should reach out to affected parties and help them replace their destroyed equipment.

No equipment was destroyed by the old driver: the old driver set a word in the firmware of counterfeit devices to zero. All that needs to happen to reverse what some comment-writers are calling "bricking" is to set the word back to its original value. The new version of the driver could probably do that.

I'm not an expert on USB protocol, so I'm not sure how your suggestion would work. The driver bricks it in the sense that the Product ID of the device is wiped (zero'd). As a result, the OS doesn't know what to do with it or what drivers to connect it with.

Is there some signature to the USB device that would allow the OS to know what to do with the affected gizmos? Or do you have to explicitly tell the system "no, really, the device on this USB port is specifically this"? If it's not automatically deployed like the initial driver but rather actually requires the user to screw with firmware-style updates, then it's effectively ruined for many beginners with these chips. (Thankfully, there's been a lot of fuss over this, so newbies will likely be able to troubleshoot this problem after a few hours of groping in the dark for why their device has gone silent.)

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#28

Post by bri3d » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 3:02 PM UTC

DigitalJack wrote: post #26

bri3d wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why they don't make the messaging more clear. In their pre-bricking drivers, FDTI caused the counterfeits to fail in confusing and counterintuitive ways, rather than just telling the user that the chip is fake. As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejectin…

I don't think that is very straight forward. It's easy to know how your device will operate in various conditions. counterfeits can fail in a million unpredictable ways.

FTDI have code which can tell with some high degree of certainty (at least enough that they trusted it to brick devices!) that a chip is fake.

They've used this code to make counterfeits intentionally unpredictable in the last few versions of their driver, rather than simply stopping the device with an error code (like Prolific do) or notifying the user or client library (like all of these vendors should be doing).

So, for FTDI at least, it should be very straightforward to do something other than intentionally making fakes of their devices behave unpredictably.

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#29

Post by serf » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 3:02 PM UTC

DigitalJack wrote: post #26

bri3d wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why they don't make the messaging more clear. In their pre-bricking drivers, FDTI caused the counterfeits to fail in confusing and counterintuitive ways, rather than just telling the user that the chip is fake. As a user, if my device stops working randomly, my first thought is certainly not "there was a counterfeit chip in the supply chain for this hardware and the drivers must be rejectin…

I don't think that is very straight forward. It's easy to know how your device will operate in various conditions. counterfeits can fail in a million unpredictable ways.

FTDI was asked to return a string like "COUNTERFEITCHIP" or something similar instead of returning zeros, so they instead did a PID reset or some such to disable instead.

A bunch of chips failing with COUNTERFEITCHIP may have been pretty obvious

Re: FTDI removes counterfeit-bricking driver from Windows Update

#30

Post by Alupis » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 3:04 PM UTC

smilekzs wrote: post #15

Alupis wrote: post #11

Seems a lot of the posts on that thread are from HN visitors, many may not even have the equipment/chip in discussion. While it's great FTI reversed their decision (I'd hate to see this sort of thing become wide-spread), it's a little off-putting that so many non-users of the chip could force a company into something.

Were we to wait for the real users to notice, it would have been too late.

No, but suppose this was another scenario, such as automatic product bagger/sealers and some counterfeit part was being bricked by the original manufacturer. I doubt anyone outside of the warehouse/manufacturing industry would care, nor would anyone outside that industry have any real right to care.

In the FTI situation, I'm indifferent, but I just don't like the "crowd mentality" thing where people get stirred up about things that only a few hours ago, they had no idea even existed.