From what source does AIDA64 read identity of device's chipset?

[Etienne Stevens]

I recently purchased a USB3-to-SATA adapter that, according to the vendor, contains an ASMedia ASM1053E chip.  When I looked inside, I saw what appears to be a counterfeit chip painted to resemble a 1053E... the font wasn't crisp and the font color wasn't white, unlike online images of the genuine chip.  When I used AIDA64 Extreme to display information about the adapter, AIDA64 displayed "1053," not "1053E."

 

The manufacturer sent me a new adapter direct from China, freshly manufactured.  With the new adapter, AIDA64 displayed "1053e." 

 

Does AIDA64 read the value from the ASMedia chip itself, or does AIDA64 rely on some other supporting chip in the device (perhaps firmware programmed by the device manufacturer) to report honest information about the identity of the chip?  In other words, would it be easy for a device's manufacturer to fool AIDA64 into reporting false information, so that AIDA64 could be fooled into displaying "1053e" when the chip isn't really a 1053E? (To make it harder for users to detect cheap fakes.)

 

[Fiery]

USB devices have a lot of information encoded in their firmware, including vendor ID, product ID, manufacturer string, product string, serial number, etc. Since they're all stored in the firmware, they can all be set to any value by a simple firmware reprogramming. Making a USB-connected chip look like another chip (in the USB device information block) is quite easy unfortunately.

Regards,

Fiery

[Etienne Stevens]

Thanks for the quick response!

 

Yes, it is unfortunate that an unscrupulous device manufacturer can easily fool the software.  Perhaps chip manufacturers can work out an industry-standard authentication protocol that would be robust against man-in-the-middle attacks.