Flutterby™! : FTDI driver and bogus chips

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FTDI driver and bogus chips

2014-10-22 23:24:30.693572+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments

Careful: Windows FTDI drivers are intentionally bricking devices that use counterfeit FTDI chips.

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.

MeFi has more linkage

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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: FTDI driver and bogus chips made: 2014-10-24 13:31:33.204861+00 by: TheSHAD0W

I'm very surprised Microsoft is allowing this update to be pushed.

#Comment Re: FTDI driver and bogus chips made: 2014-10-24 22:51:02.422322+00 by: Dan Lyke

Brainwagon has a good summary.

I suspect that if Microsoft had known, Microsoft would not have allowed the update to be published, because this is a big hit to user trust of automated security updates. I don't know what the tipping point will be, but I suspect that the Internet of 5 years from now is going to look very very different, because we're stumbling around some crisis of trust levels looking for both a solution and a tipping point...