Windows update driver turns hardware hacker's USB serial device into brick

Hardware hackers found that their Arduino-based microcontrollers became inoperable after Microsoft's recent push for Windows drivers. The updated driver is related to the USB to serial port chip of the Scottish company FTDI. The FTDI chip is very popular. Almost every microcontroller and embedded identification that can communicate through the serial port use FTDI chips, but these chips are not all made by FTDI. Some are actually imitations.

The latest driver released by FTDI in August this year added the function of verifying the authenticity of the chip. The driver was pushed to the user through Microsoft Windows Update. As a result, some users found that their serial controller could not work, even worse. The serial port controller itself has also become brick, not only under Windows, but also under Linux. Some brick-and-mortar devices are considered to use legitimate FTDI components, but in fact it is difficult to distinguish, because OEMs or ODMs sometimes ignore design rules, which is not uncommon.