Author Topic: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??  (Read 946814 times)

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Offline DaWaN

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #325 on: October 23, 2014, 07:58:01 am »
so you are not responsible for it, whats the problem?
The trouble is this is difficult to support, so it will cost me time further down the line. I understand the reason why FTDI does this, but by hurting the end customer in an inconvenient way just causes a lot of potential support for me, this is something I simply do not have the time for..

did anything change today? you could ALWAYS get screwed by a fake transistor that burns out after couple of hours
Most discrete components get substituted by local alternatives instead of clones, these local alternatives can be easily verified whether they meet specification.
So far I have been lucky I guess as I do not recall problems with fake parts so far..

no more transistors too? no more opamps, no more avrs? I suppose you stopped using pendrives and SD cards, they all get faked in china
With semiconductor parts I have been lucky so far.. As for pendrivers and SD cards.. Please do not remind me of the pain I had already with that fake stuff :rant:
All the Raspberry PI development kits ship with our own SD card, you want to use another one? Fine: but no support from me anymore!

you dont have to, fake one simply wont work outright = no wasted time
Sure, buying them and testing them does not cost time and money :palm:
Or what do you think of the case when I test them on a PC with an older driver? In that case I hand over the working cable and it gets bricked at the end user, fun stuff right?

why would you need any? Farnell has original chips and there is zero risk of getting fake, where is the problem?
I am not scared about locally built prototypes: those will be fine. Problems will arise when stuff gets built in volume in the Far East.

I simply dont get angry people from this thread - you bought a fake, deal with it. Imagine someone selling Daves uCurrent Gold, build using 5% resistors and lm358, all made to look like the genuine one, except the price is $10. This is your $2 FTDI cable with free shipping.
The problem is the way FTDI hits the end user, fighting counterfeit parts is no problem! There are many different ways to fight these counterfeits, but FTDI managed to choose more or less the worst method I guess...
 

Online nctnicoTopic starter

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #326 on: October 23, 2014, 07:58:41 am »
Now I am working on a new design, but I'd like to retain a USB -> TTL serial chip with drivers available on Windows Update.
As far as I know the Prolific PL2303 does not have a driver on Windows Update, am I right? I find this chip also hard to source locally for prototypes (EU based, so I prefer Farnell).
Anyone know an alternative?
I always liked the CP21xx devices from Silabs. I think these are also more robust (less problems when switching something on/off) than the FT232R. The only reason I choose for the FT232R is the TSOP package instead of QFN but the advantage of TSOP over QFN is marginal to me.
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Offline moemoe

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #327 on: October 23, 2014, 07:59:45 am »
They removed their vendor ID from clone chips, nothing more.

So, they own an integer value?

As long as I don't violate any patents, I can build a system that talks a protocol that looks like USB (of course I'm not allowed to call it USB) and send any data I like.
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Offline marcan

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #328 on: October 23, 2014, 08:05:18 am »

This isn't "FTDI's driver accidentally damages clones". FTDI's driver contains code blatantly, explicitly, and clearly designed to damage clones.

They removed their vendor ID from clone chips, nothing more.
Actually, no, they removed the product ID only, not the vendor ID. And no, they don't actually legally own their Vendor ID in any relevant way, nor do they have the legal right to remove their Vendor ID from clone chips. USB Vendor IDs are, legally speaking, only relevant to USB certification. I can use whaver Vendor ID I damn well want in my product, and that is 100% legal, valid, and ethical (it just won't pass USB-IF certification).

Flamewar aside, I figured out what's going on with the real chips: turns out their EEPROM is written in 32bit units. Writing to even addresses is ignored; the value is buffered and the address discarded. Writing to odd addresses writes the entire 32bits, using whatever value was last buffered for the other half. So both the PID write and the checksum write are ignored on real FTDI chips, as they are both written to even addresses. I still don't know why it works on clone chips though, since the checksum is written to the wrong place (it should normally be on an odd address); presumably they don't check it.
 

Offline BH

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #329 on: October 23, 2014, 08:06:06 am »
I don't agree that this risk is limited to $2 converters with free shipping off Ebay.

When a contract manufacturing company is producing a product, and they get caught with short stock and long lead-times, they go to the grey market and take a risk.  I've seen it first hand, time and time again.  They get the parts in, test a couple, and if they work they give the all-clear for mass production. 

So the products "at risk" here are ALL products with an FT232 chip in it, since you cannot possibly know where the device manufacturer obtained their parts.

My personal take on this is that FTDI have made a big mistake in not informing end users of the problem.  I'm not sure if I have a problem with bricking the device as such, in the manner that they do it, (I can see both points of view) but I do have a problem with not informing the user.  The vast majority of users will just experience a dead product, and will have no idea that the reason is because of a fake IC.

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Offline Simon

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #330 on: October 23, 2014, 08:12:58 am »
KPR8 has been banned therefore please do not report any more of his post!
 

Offline limbo

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #331 on: October 23, 2014, 08:15:34 am »
For a moment, forget that you are engineers.

Consider end users. What someone owns a device with fake chip?
Imagine devices which are working for a long period of time and after the update...  |O

It seems FTDI adopting "Stuxnet" policy!
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 08:47:39 am by limbo »
 

Offline jeremy

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #332 on: October 23, 2014, 08:17:28 am »
wow, this really blew up while I was asleep!

thanks marcan for doing the disassembly legwork. Was going to give it a look this morning but I see that you have hex-rays, so I can't really compete with that! :P

Can we stop with the analogies please? Let's just look at the facts:

  • after using a cloned/counterfeit device in a windows PC, it is "disabled"
  • the disabled device has its product ID (not vendor ID) set to 0, which windows later than XP does not like
  • you can not re-enable the device on the same PC that "disabled" it, unless you install linux (or XP :-//) and have a more advanced skillset than being able to plug in a usb cable
  • the user is in no way notified that their cloned device has been disabled, unless they look at the device information in the system settings and then it's more like a "if 0000 then probably]/i] disabled by the driver"
  • the code that disables the device was not present in the past, and it appears to have no purpose other than to disable the cloned devices
  • the user is not given an option to accept or reject the license if it is delivered by windows update
  • it is impossible for an end user to know if a chip is counterfeit (unless they are prepared to use nitric acid or an x-ray). To put it another way, it is not possible for a user to non-destructively know if the part is a counterfeit even if the part is in their hands
  • there is no evidence that the clones are actually "clones" in terms of the die. The FTDI marking on top is definitely infringing, and it is possible to copy FTDI very accurately in this regard
  • the people who make the die aren't necessarily the infringers. It is quite possible for someone to buy a batch of FTDI-interoperable chips, laser or sand the markings off the chip, and add new ones. See the sparkfun fake AVR episode

I've always purchased my stock from real suppliers, but now I'm worried to plug in any devices that have an FTDI chip in them that were purchased elsewhere (like the local electronics shop, sparkfun, adafruit, various embedded linux boards, microcontroller dev boards, etc). Fortunately I use linux and mac for almost anything.

PS if you'd like a USB serial converter to play with, the cypress PSOC boards come with one that you can snap off. And the boards are only $4 each, plus you get an ARM microcontroller! I bought 5.  ^-^
 

Offline maxstone

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #333 on: October 23, 2014, 08:38:23 am »


I can use whaver Vendor ID I damn well want in my product, and that is 100% legal, valid, and ethical (it just won't pass USB-IF certification).


And risk breaking USB plug and play and end user systems.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 08:43:42 am by maxstone »
 

Online nctnicoTopic starter

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #334 on: October 23, 2014, 08:43:43 am »
Again: the only fake thing about the 'counterfeit' chips is the FTDI logo on them. The rest is 100% different so it doesn't infringe any copyrights, patents or whatever.
No. It's an IC plus a driver. And the clone is infringing on the software license agreement.
You can't enforce such a restriction under copyright law. You can allow people to use your software and make them pay whatever you want but you can't limit the way people use the software. Besides that the driver comes with Windows and there is no way to decline the license therefore the license is null and void.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline marcan

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #335 on: October 23, 2014, 08:47:51 am »
And risk breaking USB plug and play and end user systems.
If by that you mean risk my device not working right because the wrong driver got loaded, sure; that's why we have IDs after all. But there is no risk to end user systems outside of the device in question.

We have certifications for a reason, and the system was designed this way for a reason, but there is a vast, vast difference between a) what the spec says, b) what is moral/right for end users, and c) what is legal.

Putting someone else's logo on your part? That's neither compliant with the spec, nor moral, nor legal.
Using someone else's VID with your own, custom, proprietary device? Violates the spec, it's stupid since it might cause trouble for end-users if there is a PID collision, but perfectly legal.
Using someone else's VID and PID, intending to provide a compatible programming interface? Still out of spec, but perfectly moral, most likely fine in the absence of malicious intent, and certainly legal.
 

Offline limbo

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #336 on: October 23, 2014, 08:54:54 am »
Again: the only fake thing about the 'counterfeit' chips is the FTDI logo on them. The rest is 100% different so it doesn't infringe any copyrights, patents or whatever.

No. It's an IC plus a driver. And the clone is infringing on the software license agreement.  There would be no issue if the clone ICs supplied their own driver. But they're not. They are using/stealing FTDI's driver in total violation of the licensing agreement. Buy the FTDI chip - use the driver, gratis.  Otherwise, write your own driver.

It is the logo and the IDs used by the chip than makes it "fake". Using FTDI IDs the chips forcing OS to load the appropriate drivers.
Anyway this is well known by FTDI for long period of time.
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Offline maxstone

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #337 on: October 23, 2014, 08:56:59 am »
For a moment, forget that you are engineers.

Imagine end users. What someone owns a device with fake chip?
Imagine devices which are working for a long period of time and after the update...  |O

It seems FTDI adopting "Stuxnet" policy!

Agreed.

I'm still wondering just how big of a problem this is for FTDI and just what other options it had to protect itself from being cloned out of its own market?

 

Offline BH

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #338 on: October 23, 2014, 09:04:10 am »
I don't think you'd need to knowingly go grey market to get counterfeit chips. Proper suppliers have been hit by counterfeits before.

I agree, and that's because "proper" suppliers will experience the same issue.  They need stock but can't deal with the lead times.  So they put out interest to other suppliers.  And then they run the risk of ending up with counterfeit devices.

Whichever way you look at it, there's a risk and I totally agree with you.  But I think contract manufacturers pose the biggest risk.  Perhaps that's just because I have first hand experience of them going to the grey market, being burned, and yet doing the same thing all over again the next time.
 

Offline AndyC_772

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #339 on: October 23, 2014, 09:15:10 am »
Does anyone know for sure how long this driver has been out?

A few hobbyists being inconvenienced by a cheap serial cable no longer working is one thing, but what happens when much bigger, more important equipment suddenly won't talk to the outside world any more?

Let's see, where are serial communication links used...

Automated test equipment? Sure.
CNC machines? Undoubtedly.
Hospital equipment? Quite possibly.
Air traffic control? Dunno.

Is is a good or bad idea to keep the PCs to which these machines are connected patched and up-to-date with all the latest updates from MS? Normally I'd have said 'yes', though it just became a more difficult question to answer correctly.

I wonder how many of these counterfeit parts are in use in the world's chip fabs...?

Online tggzzz

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #340 on: October 23, 2014, 09:16:24 am »
Somebody may have posted this earlier in the thread
Quote
Company Counterfeit Device Statement

FTDI Chip is committed to taking appropriate measures to protect our
customers from the adverse impacts caused by counterfeiting of FTDI Chip
devices. Many of these devices resemble FTDI Chip markings which may lead
the customer to believe they are genuine. FTDI Chip has established a proactive
and global process aimed at detecting and deterring such counterfeit activity.
In order to protect our customers from acquiring counterfeit FTDI Chip devices,
we strongly advise the purchase of products directly from FTDI Chip or one of
our authorised distributors.

Please visit our Sales Network for a complete listing of authorised sales and
distribution partners.

from http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/QualityDocuments/Counterfeit%20statement.pdf

My opinion, which is worth what you are paying for it...

I have a great deal of sympathy with FTDI.

They shouldn't have done this: it will cause their customers (i.e. big companies) endless grief, will result in endless lawsuits (many directed at FTDI), and will large corporations' QA and purchasing departments may ban FDTI products from their future systems.

It is a "sony rootkit" moment.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline janoc

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #341 on: October 23, 2014, 09:16:44 am »

Agreed.

I'm still wondering just how big of a problem this is for FTDI and just what other options it had to protect itself from being cloned out of its own market?

Well, there are plenty of ways they could have taken instead of bricking hardware. And it obviously is a problem for them when they are taking such ridiculous action as to sabotage someone else's hardware.

On the other hand, there are plenty of other USB-to-whatever bridge manufacturers - Prolific, Microchip, Cypress ... Is FTDI going to start to attempt sabotaging  every other competitor as well now? (technicalities about loading the drivers due to different VID:PIDs aside). Where is this BS going to stop?

 

Offline Zeta

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #342 on: October 23, 2014, 09:24:50 am »
why would you need any? Farnell has original chips and there is zero risk of getting fake, where is the problem?


I simply dont get angry people from this thread - you bought a fake, deal with it. Imagine someone selling Daves uCurrent Gold, build using 5% resistors and lm358, all made to look like the genuine one, except the price is $10. This is your $2 FTDI cable with free shipping.
I agree with you
 

Offline maxstone

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #343 on: October 23, 2014, 09:29:14 am »
Does anyone know for sure how long this driver has been out?

A few hobbyists being inconvenienced by a cheap serial cable no longer working is one thing, but what happens when much bigger, more important equipment suddenly won't talk to the outside world any more?

Let's see, where are serial communication links used...

Automated test equipment? Sure.
CNC machines? Undoubtedly.
Hospital equipment? Quite possibly.
Air traffic control? Dunno.

Is is a good or bad idea to keep the PCs to which these machines are connected patched and up-to-date with all the latest updates from MS? Normally I'd have said 'yes', though it just became a more difficult question to answer correctly.

I wonder how many of these counterfeit parts are in use in the world's chip fabs...?

As a general rule, the higher the price/risk of failure, the more stringent parts, suppliers and contractors are assessed. At the company my brother works for, you have to go to the manufactures directly or get a batch code from them to go to a distributor with.
 

Offline maxstone

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #344 on: October 23, 2014, 09:32:04 am »

Agreed.

I'm still wondering just how big of a problem this is for FTDI and just what other options it had to protect itself from being cloned out of its own market?

Well, there are plenty of ways they could have taken instead of bricking hardware. And it obviously is a problem for them when they are taking such ridiculous action as to sabotage someone else's hardware.


Such as?
 

Offline Rasz

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #345 on: October 23, 2014, 09:32:58 am »
They removed their vendor ID from clone chips, nothing more.

So, they own an integer value?

As long as I don't violate any patents, I can build a system that talks a protocol that looks like USB (of course I'm not allowed to call it USB) and send any data I like.

then be prepared to receive and handle any data third party software throws at you
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Offline maxstone

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #346 on: October 23, 2014, 09:40:37 am »
Somebody may have posted this earlier in the thread


from http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/QualityDocuments/Counterfeit%20statement.pdf

My opinion, which is worth what you are paying for it...

I have a great deal of sympathy with FTDI.

They shouldn't have done this: it will cause their customers (i.e. big companies) endless grief, will result in endless lawsuits (many directed at FTDI), and will large corporations' QA and purchasing departments may ban FDTI products from their future systems.

I'm sure FTDI would have done a bit of research first. Traced down the manufacture, looked at who they where selling to and what numbers before acting on it.

I'd be surprised if this will effect nothing more than cheap usb->serial cables and ebay arduinos. Something which will give the likes of Adafruit and Sparkfun a bit more breathing room.
 

Offline tocsa120ls

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #347 on: October 23, 2014, 09:45:55 am »
Interesting. I just saw this driver debacle on hackaday. (I have seen the microscope comparison pictures, that was cool! I like chips...)
Got me thinking.
I have a self built Atmel STK500 compatible programmer, that has a FT232 in it. It was an OK programmer but it was difficult to use with any type of USB extension cable. I will do this update and check it this evening... maybe I had a counterfeit FT232RL.
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Offline rew

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #348 on: October 23, 2014, 09:48:13 am »
When they say their driver may harm a product of another vendor, I normally take that to mean that they cannot guarantee that it won't break by "normal use" by the FTDI driver. That they intentionally take measures to break it makes it a whole new type of game.

I can visually see the difference between the fake FTDI chips that I have and the real ones. 

If the consensus is that it is legal to fake the FTDI VID, then the fake parts are legal, except maybe the trademarked "FTDI" marking printed on the top. I don't think it is fair that FTDI disables the chips that violate that trademark. What right do they have to involve consumers that happen to have bought an item that contains a trademark violating component?

When I look on the "Texas instruments" site they have a "pricing at 1k" column in their product selection tables. As I don't buy components from them in 1k units, those prices are way lower than what I pay with Farnell for 2, 5 or 10 of them. With a lot of products we KNOW that in china people can earn money from putting items in envelopes at $1 per item including shipping. So what makes it impossible that someone in china bought 1k FTDI chips and is willing to sell them to me at cost+shipping+margin ending up cheaper than Farnell at 5, 10 or 20 quantity?

Also, getting the right amount of chips at the right moment in time for production is difficult. So if someone has bought 100k chips, but then the production run gets cancelled at 80k and they are left with 20k chips but no PCBs to put them on. What now? If you sell them at the normal price every potential buyer will buy from the normal distributer. So with the leftover chips, someone will have to take their loss, and sell them below "normal" price (which for that person/company is better than taking a 100% loss on those chips). So it is also conceivable that some chips are available at prices BELOW normal volume  prices because of some over-buying situations.

Is everything from that end of the globe fake? If you buy an STM32F103 development board, is the STM chip on there fake?

As for what FTDI can do about the fakes, wouldn't it be much nicer if they said (say, in a popup window): "The chip you have connected claims to be FTDI, but is in fact a fake. We, FTDI, invested time and money to make drivers for our chips. Please contact the vendor of this chip for the driver for their chip". 

Well, there are plenty of ways they could have taken instead of bricking hardware. And it obviously is a problem for them when they are taking such ridiculous action as to sabotage someone else's hardware.
Such as?
If you buy a game from vendor X and in the EULA it says it cannot guarantee to work on PCs that have games from other vendors installed. Would you read that EULA? Would you be surprised if it erased essential parts of the other game? What if you load a driver/utility for your seagate disk, and it intentionally bricks the western digital drive in your computer? Would that be OK?
 

Offline Tandy

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Re: FTDI driver kills fake FTDI FT232??
« Reply #349 on: October 23, 2014, 09:50:42 am »
A point that a lot of people are missing is that some very expensive equipment could go out of action.

For example a manufacture of industrial machinery that was originally controlled by a serial link has had an FT232 designed into later revisions due to the disappearance of serial ports on computers. They might only sell 50 machines a year so they are not in a position to buy direct form the manufacturer so they go on-line and buy from the channel. If these fake chips have made their way into the channel then there could be factories with equipment costing many thousands and production lines stopped because of this deliberate action by FTDI.

The driver has a way to identify the fake chips so they could have easily just have made it so that the driver no longer worked for the fake chip. Deliberately damaging the fake chip is just going to far.
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