Turn off windows auto-update NOW. FTDI (who knows with or without MS's blessing) has released a new driver that gets pushed to you that bricks work-alike FTDI USB<>rs232 adaptors. Why care? Because many Arduino clones, not to mention many of the cheap serial dongles you've bought over the years of transition - computers now rarely have a serial port - will be reprogrammed by this new (windows only for now?) driver and require repair to work again, even on linux.
Many moderately legit chipmakers have used the FTDI ID's so as not to have to write their own drivers and have windows and other opsys recognize their stuff as a plain-jane serial port over USB (yeah, that's real innovation there...not a lot on either the cloners or FTDI's part, seems kind of obvious, like a connector adapter, but you know how jealous firms are of their precious eye-pee since almost none compete on innovation anymore). The new FTDI windows drivers detects these and reprograms them - yes, that's direct illegal access to a computing device (in DMCA legalese this is against the law utterly if one of us does it) to change the PID to zero, which then will not be recognized as legit by *any* opsys. Luckily, there are ways of fixing this - till the next time the device is plugged into windows, that is.
Here's a fuller explanation at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... e-hackers/
Which lead me to some threads linked from the comments on how to un-brick your arduino (or whatever).
http://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comment ... re/clgviyl
https://code.google.com/p/libcomm14cux/ ... eWithLinux
Being a linux user (only have windows in virtual box for someday perhaps looking into doing cross platform stuff again), this hasn't hit me yet. But I'd bet things like my seeduinos would brick if plugged into windows, or most of my no-name serial converters.
This is kind of like FTDI doing a replay of the Sony rootkit DRM attack, and they'll probably get off with a pocket change fine if even that. Having slipped it by MS - well who knows if there was a nudge and a wink..but so far, only windows is affected.
But it's not just that clones will no longer work on windows - they are bricked for all opsys till you apply one of the fixes listed above. That's pretty crappy behavior, in my rarely humble opinion. This is probably going to turn out bigger than FTDI or most anyone thought - up until the other flaws of the USB protocol get used for bricking the other direction. Turns out all those USB sticks and flash cards are programmable after leaving the factory - kind of have to be if you understand what bunnie is talking about - and that this could be used to have a malicious USB stick or whatever pwn a machine via pretending to be various other devices at various times, keylog, install badware....it's a long list of bad things that can be done once a machine trusts a peripheral.
Yes, this takes a long time and would be hard to understand for noobs. But this board isn't for noobs anyway. I strongly urge you to partake of some knowledge of what really goes on in this stuff.
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554
It's inevitable that more will come of this. Keep your eyes open, this one has more potential than is generally realized for creating real havoc.