4 ms·

How are your personal property rights being violated? If an ATI graphics card lied and claimed to be an nVidia card and the drivers cause it to overheat and ca

by dsl 12y ago

How are your personal property rights being violated? If an ATI graphics card lied and claimed to be an nVidia card and the drivers cause it to overheat and catch fire, who is at fault? Should you be required to QA your drivers against counterfeit products? Edit: nobody has shown that the driver is intentionally writing the ID to 0, the counterfeit chip isn't even close to the same circuitry and could be screwing up a legitimate instruction.

ctz 12y ago
You should look up the word 'intent' in law.
revelation 12y ago
This isn't a misconfiguration issue, or that Linux bug that bricked certain SCSI devices. No, they are explicitly asking the counterfeit chip to rewrite its USB PID to 0, which renders it unusable. That's intentional and clearly malicious.
- cnvogel 12y ago
  Has this been proven by a corresponding packet dump listing "Write EEPROM, offset 0, 4 bytes: [0,0,0,0]? Or are they -sneakily- bricking the device by evoking an unintended reaction to a seemingly innocuous command? The former will be easy to prove, the latter.. probably not so much.
  - teraflop 12y ago
    Check out FTDI's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/FTDIChip/status/524928658180304896 https://twitter.com/FTDIChip/status/524928658180304896 They're being somewhat evasive, but it's clear that this is intended as a deliberate anti-counterfeiting strategy.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Wow they could have planned this misadventure a bit more carefully. Having decided to do this stupid destructive thing, they should at least have resolved not to admit they did it on purpose. The general public would have much more sympathy if the story was "after lengthy investigation, we've determined that the bug only affects counterfeit products... we have sympathy for all victims of counterfeiting." Instead, they've gone for "in your face, you cheap bastards!" Honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you're evil.
  - jdiez17 12y ago
    It's been proved by reverse engineering the FTDI drivers and annotating the code. It exploits some edge case in which the counterfeit device does not behave exactly like the original. https://marcan.st/transf/ftdi_evil.png https://marcan.st/transf/ftdi_evil.png
wtallis 12y ago
This isn't about damage from a lack of precautionary measures. It's about damage due to the drivers doing something completely irrelevant to ordinary use- code that has no reason to be in the driver in the first place.
mikeash 12y ago
If the drivers caused it to overheat because of an oversight, then that's just sad. If the drivers caused it to overheat because the company went in and wrote, if(counterfeit) overheat(); then they're liable. Surely this should be obvious.

by dsl 12y ago

ctz 12y ago

You should look up the word 'intent' in law.

revelation 12y ago

This isn't a misconfiguration issue, or that Linux bug that bricked certain SCSI devices. No, they are explicitly asking the counterfeit chip to rewrite its USB PID to 0, which renders it unusable. That's intentional and clearly malicious.

cnvogel 12y ago
Has this been proven by a corresponding packet dump listing "Write EEPROM, offset 0, 4 bytes: [0,0,0,0]? Or are they -sneakily- bricking the device by evoking an unintended reaction to a seemingly innocuous command? The former will be easy to prove, the latter.. probably not so much.
- teraflop 12y ago
  Check out FTDI's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/FTDIChip/status/524928658180304896 https://twitter.com/FTDIChip/status/524928658180304896 They're being somewhat evasive, but it's clear that this is intended as a deliberate anti-counterfeiting strategy.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Wow they could have planned this misadventure a bit more carefully. Having decided to do this stupid destructive thing, they should at least have resolved not to admit they did it on purpose. The general public would have much more sympathy if the story was "after lengthy investigation, we've determined that the bug only affects counterfeit products... we have sympathy for all victims of counterfeiting." Instead, they've gone for "in your face, you cheap bastards!" Honesty is not always the best policy, especially when you're evil.
- jdiez17 12y ago
  It's been proved by reverse engineering the FTDI drivers and annotating the code. It exploits some edge case in which the counterfeit device does not behave exactly like the original. https://marcan.st/transf/ftdi_evil.png https://marcan.st/transf/ftdi_evil.png

wtallis 12y ago

This isn't about damage from a lack of precautionary measures. It's about damage due to the drivers doing something completely irrelevant to ordinary use- code that has no reason to be in the driver in the first place.

mikeash 12y ago

If the drivers caused it to overheat because of an oversight, then that's just sad. If the drivers caused it to overheat because the company went in and wrote, if(counterfeit) overheat(); then they're liable. Surely this should be obvious.