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FTDI drivers are bricking counterfeit chips


fishbone

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Not sure to what extent this may or may not apply to those using VAG-COM cables on eBay in conjuction with FTDI drivers and open source tuning.

 

http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/

 

The FTDI FT232 chip is found in thousands of electronic baubles, from Arduinos to test equipment, and more than a few bits of consumer electronics. It’s a simple chip, converting USB to a serial port, but very useful and probably one of the most cloned pieces of silicon on Earth. Thanks to a recent Windows update, all those fake FTDI chips are at risk of being bricked. This isn’t a case where fake FTDI chips won’t work if plugged into a machine running the newest FTDI driver; the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer.

 

Reports of problems with FTDI chips surfaced early this month, with an explanation of the behavior showing up in an EEVblog forum thread. The new driver for these chips from FTDI, delivered through a recent Windows update, reprograms the USB PID to 0, something Windows, Linux, and OS X don’t like. This renders the chip inaccessible from any OS, effectively bricking any device that happens to have one of these fake FTDI serial chips.

 

Because the FTDI USB to UART chip is so incredibly common, the market is flooded with clones and counterfeits. it’s very hard to tell the difference between the real and fake versions by looking at the package, but a look at the silicon reveals vast differences. The new driver for the FT232 exploits these differences, reprogramming it so it won’t work with existing drivers. It’s a bold strategy to cut down on silicon counterfeiters on the part of FTDI. A reasonable company would go after the manufacturers of fake chips, not the consumers who are most likely unaware they have a fake chip.

 

The workaround for this driver update is to download the FT232 config tool from the FTDI website on a WinXP or Linux box, change the PID of the fake chip, and never using the new driver on a modern Windows system. There will surely be an automated tool to fix these chips automatically, but until then, take a good look at what Windows Update is installing – it’s very hard to tell if your devices have a fake FTDI chip by just looking at them.

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That kind of crap should force us to boycott FTDI. I understand it's their IP and all, but they really should be going after manufactorers.

 

If my Tactrix goes dead because the company decided to use a clone, why I pay the price? It's like US government deciding to disable all Kia's and Hyundai's when you go to fill up at the gas station, because they might have copied a design.

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Auto updates are on, but they only notify me to download them. I manually forced a check also. I've had at least 40 updates pushed into my PC and accepted over the last few months without a problem either.
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Maybe it has a real chip, I'm not sure yet. I haven't found enough info online. If it continues to happen I'm sure we'll know. And I agree covert. They've admitted that there is no real way to determine if your chip is real or not at the surface level. The abundance of ft232 chips in the electronic realm is massive. Hopefully major manufacturers of electronics were thorough when purchasing from suppliers. This could cause issues that are much greater than our 10 dollar cables not working.
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I have not had anything trying to push a windows update onto me and I have a vagcom cable. I checked my driver version, 3/30/2010 version 2.6.2.0. On Windows 7 x64.

 

is there a way to check drivers version without connecting FTDI cable? don't wanna risk to find out whether my chip is 'fake' the hard way...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Great info here Fishbone, couple of Q's.

 

This could only potentially brick a ECU when writing to it, correct? If I was just reading or logging, my ECU should be safe, but my PC could be at risk, correct?

 

Anyone have a link to an older driver, like oldversion.com used to do?

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To clarify, when we are talking about chips, we aren't talking about the PC or the car's ECU, we are talking about the onboard FTDI chipsets used by the OBD2 dongles. The drivers in question flash the chipset's ROM and makes the dongle unusable. This can be quite problematic if it occurs while you're in the middle of something critical.
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