It used to be that you were safe with FTDI cables, and only had to worry about fake cable chipsets for Prolific cables (these are the cables that plug into your USB port and into your radio).
Well, no more. Now FTDI has released Windows drivers that will not work with fake FTDI cables. How do you know if your cable is genuine? You won't, until you use the updated drivers. Read more in these articles, provided by Avi Carmi K6AVI:
To avoid the possibility of rendering your programming cable useless (bricking it), install this is version 2.10 of the FTDI driver, which does NOT brick fake cables:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM v2.10.00 WHQL Certified.exe
Note: FTDI has stopped supplying the drivers that brick your cable, but you still might find that your cable has been bricked by an earlier driver. And you might find that your software might stop "seeing" your radio - in that case you might have the updated anti-fake driver.
Apparently the fake chips have a different silicon structure (even though they look the same to the computer when you plug in the cable), and the new FTDI driver is capable of exploiting this via some clever code and re-programs the EEPROM USB ID to zero, rendering the fake chip useless (the current drivers just won't work with the fake chips, but will not render them useless).
A detailed explanation of what is (was) going on:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/
http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/ftdi-screws-up-backs-down/
A few days (now weeks) ago we learned chip maker FTDI was doing some rather shady things with a new driver released on Windows Update. The new driver worked perfectly for real FTDI chips, but for counterfeit chips – and there are a lot of them – the USB PID was set to 0, rendering them inoperable with any computer. Now, a few days later, we know exactly what happened, and FTDI is backing down; the driver has been removed from Windows Update, and an updated driver will be released next week. A PC won’t be able to communicate with a counterfeit chip with the new driver, but at least it won’t soft-brick the chip.
Microsoft has since released a statement and rolled back two versions of the FTDI driver to prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. The affected versions of the FTDI driver are 2.11.0 and 2.12.0, released on August 26, 2014. The latest version of the driver that does not have this chip bricking functionality is 2.10.0.0, released on January 27th. If you’re affected by the latest driver, rolling back the driver through the Device Manager to 2.10.0.0 will prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. You might want to find a copy of the 2.10.0 driver; this will likely be the last version of the FTDI driver to work with counterfeit chips.
How to fix a bricked fake FTDI chip: https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/2k0i7x/watch_that_windows_update_ftdi_drivers_are/clgviyl
Well, no more. Now FTDI has released Windows drivers that will not work with fake FTDI cables. How do you know if your cable is genuine? You won't, until you use the updated drivers. Read more in these articles, provided by Avi Carmi K6AVI:
To avoid the possibility of rendering your programming cable useless (bricking it), install this is version 2.10 of the FTDI driver, which does NOT brick fake cables:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/CDM/CDM v2.10.00 WHQL Certified.exe
Note: FTDI has stopped supplying the drivers that brick your cable, but you still might find that your cable has been bricked by an earlier driver. And you might find that your software might stop "seeing" your radio - in that case you might have the updated anti-fake driver.
Apparently the fake chips have a different silicon structure (even though they look the same to the computer when you plug in the cable), and the new FTDI driver is capable of exploiting this via some clever code and re-programs the EEPROM USB ID to zero, rendering the fake chip useless (the current drivers just won't work with the fake chips, but will not render them useless).
A detailed explanation of what is (was) going on:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/
http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/ftdi-screws-up-backs-down/
A few days (now weeks) ago we learned chip maker FTDI was doing some rather shady things with a new driver released on Windows Update. The new driver worked perfectly for real FTDI chips, but for counterfeit chips – and there are a lot of them – the USB PID was set to 0, rendering them inoperable with any computer. Now, a few days later, we know exactly what happened, and FTDI is backing down; the driver has been removed from Windows Update, and an updated driver will be released next week. A PC won’t be able to communicate with a counterfeit chip with the new driver, but at least it won’t soft-brick the chip.
Microsoft has since released a statement and rolled back two versions of the FTDI driver to prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. The affected versions of the FTDI driver are 2.11.0 and 2.12.0, released on August 26, 2014. The latest version of the driver that does not have this chip bricking functionality is 2.10.0.0, released on January 27th. If you’re affected by the latest driver, rolling back the driver through the Device Manager to 2.10.0.0 will prevent counterfeit chips from being bricked. You might want to find a copy of the 2.10.0 driver; this will likely be the last version of the FTDI driver to work with counterfeit chips.
How to fix a bricked fake FTDI chip: https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/2k0i7x/watch_that_windows_update_ftdi_drivers_are/clgviyl