[codedokode]

Those who bought stolen devices should return them and ask for a refund from EBay. You are generally not allowed to resell stolen goods, although I am not sure if EBay is liable here.

> Back in October 2014, the FDTI manufacturer shipped a device driver that ... would make any operating system stop seeing the device by setting its USB product ID to 0 , basically killing the USB device.

Well, if that id can be set to 0, it can also be set back to original value, isn't it?

[Jonnax]

If I recall correctly, it didn't get recognised as a USB device anymore so you couldn't reflash it.

[crankylinuxuser]

Linux was able to allow connections to VID:0 PID:0 for usbserial.h about 3 days after the initial reports. From there, it was possible to rewrite the FTDI firmware to restore functionality.