Mar 10, 2023 19:00:00

How to watch 'DRM-protected Netflix movies' on Apple silicon Mac with Linux installed

With the advent of '

Asahi Linux ', it became possible to install Linux on Macs with Apple chips such as M1 and M2, but Asahi Linux had the problem that 'Netflix movies cannot be viewed'. . Security researcher David Buchanan explains why this problem occurred and how the countermeasures were established.

The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux | Blog
https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html

Movie distribution services and music distribution services use a protection technology called DRM to prevent unauthorized copying of content. On machines with Windows or macOS, various browsers such as Edge, Safari, and Chrome support DRM, so there are few problems with viewing content, but minor problems such as machines with Linux and machines with Arm-based CPUs In such environments, DRM often causes content playback problems.

Netflix protects content using a type of DRM developed by Google called `` Widevine ''. However, since Widevine's official support on Linux is provided only for ``using Chrome on a machine with an x86 or x64 compatible CPU'', ``Apple silicon such as M1 or M2 (equipped with Arm CPU It was impossible to play Netflix content on Asahi Linux, which was supposed to work on Macs that use SoC). Although there is software that bypasses Widevine on the Internet, Mr. Buchanan sticks to using Netflix by ``legitimate means'' and aimed to make Widevine available on Asahi Linux.

As mentioned above, the official support for Widevine on Linux is provided only for Chrome, but browsers such as Firefox refer to the Widevine implementation method managed by the Chromium project (the open source project that forms the basis of Chrome). Widevine is supported. However, such a trick countermeasure method is only possible on 'a machine with an x86 or x64 compatible CPU', and it is necessary to consider another countermeasure for an OS that runs on an Arm machine such as Asahi Linux.

One of the prominent OS that runs on Arm machines is Chrome OS developed by Google. As mentioned above, Widevine should not be supported on Arm machines, but Chrome OS supports Widevine and you can browse content such as Netflix. In addition, there is a precedent that the development team of the single board computer 'Raspberry Pi' developed 'Widevine

for Raspberry Pi' with reference to Widevine for Chrome OS.

Asahi Linux is developed based on the Arm compatible version of the Linux distribution 'Arch Linux'. As a result of Buchanan's investigation, it turned out that there is

a Widevine package developed for Arm compatible Arch Linux. This package is not officially supported by Arch Linux, but installing it will allow you to view Netflix content without problems.

If you can use Widevine with Arch Linux for Arm, you can easily use Widevine with Asahi Linux. However, Asahi Linux

has a problem that the page size is 16K, and it was impossible to operate Widevine, which was developed on the premise of a page size of 4K, as it was.

Therefore, Buchanan developed a patch to make the 'Widevine package for Arch Linux for Arm' compatible with 16K, and contacted the maintainer of the package to incorporate the patch. As a result, Asahi Linux users can now view Widevine-protected content by installing the package.

However, Netflix also checks the browser's user agent, so it was impossible to view Netflix content just by installing the above package. Therefore, Mr. Buchanan used the Chrome OS user agent shown below to impersonate Chrome OS and successfully browse Netflix content.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS aarch64 15236.80.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/109.0.5414.125 Safari/537.36

However, in the above method, the resolution of the movie was limited to a maximum of 720p. As a countermeasure to this problem, Mr. Buchanan introduced a browser extension ` ` Netflix 1080p ' ' that can automate the operation of `` explicitly requesting playback at 1080p ''. As a result, the environment of 'playing 1080p Netflix movies on a Mac with Asahi Linux installed' has finally been realized.

As originally intended, I succeeded in playing Netflix movies on Asahi Linux. However, Buchanan said, ``It's overwhelmingly easier to use a torrent client (download illegally uploaded Netflix movies) than to support DRM,'' and DRM, which is supposed to protect content, prevents illegal downloads. It points out that it leads to encouraging results. On top of that, we are asking Google for official support of Widevine for Arm Linux.