in your opinion, do you think going forward they will be able to maintain the software or do you think after the next revocation they will be finished, again in your opinion I know nothing is certain in this cat and mouse game.
slottedpig
As a word of the wise, this is an endless cat-and-mouse game. No matter how much "protection" these cats add, someone somewhere will find a way to break it sooner or later. They can't make it impossible; all they can do is make it harder so that it takes more time.
If we talk about StreamFab, the way they do things are through cracking the ChromeCDM. Now if we talk about the ChromeCDM, extracting the private key of the ChromeCDM is nearly impossible. If you want to understand how difficult this is, I recommend reading
this and
this. These links describe the processes of two different people attempting to extract the ChromeCDM's private key in the past. You'll see how incredibly challenging it is. The person in the first link I mentioned is the only one I know who managed to extract the complete 2048-bit private key of a ChromeCDM. The guy in the second link only managed to extract half of it despite all his efforts. These were processes done for the past versions of the ChromeCDM. Extracting the private key of the newer versions are going to be 10x harder. Each new version changes obfuscation methods and related functions, so you won't be able to repeat the same process again.
However, StreamFab uses a slightly different method. They (most likely the individual reverse engineer they are paying to do this), do not attempt to extract the private key completely or even partially. Instead, they use a method similar to
this one. In the readme, it is mentioned as a "universal method," meaning it can be applied to any future versions of the ChromeCDM. Note that StreamFab does not use that exact method. The principle is the same, but StreamFab's actual approach is very different and quite smart. They were able to do this for the ChromeCDM versions 2209,2392,2449,2557 and now 2710. So yeah. They will surely be able to do it for the future versions too. (Assuming they don't lose their reverse engineer.)
The challenge is time. With each new version, it becomes increasingly harder to apply this process. For this process to work, the widevinecdm.dll has to be reversed and some specific values from some functions inside it needs to be extracted. However, because of the obfuscation methods and the needed functions themselves in the newer versions becoming more and more complex, it is going to take more and more time to reverse it each time. (Unless someone finds an easier way which is extremely unlikely btw.)
Many people might be mad with the amount of time StreamFab takes each time. However, they need to understand that being able to do this is a sort of miracle, and people should appreciate StreamFab a little more. (At least the person behind reversing these.) He has my absolute respect!
