Google’s Chrome uses a DRM component called Widevine. This component encrypts all video content that is streamed from premium services to the user’s browser. However, this component had a bug that allows a user to download the DRM-protected video content to his PC. The Chrome browser bug allows subscribed users to download premium video content from services such as Netflix, YouTube Red and Amazon Prime, thus allowing a person to pirate the movies with ease.
The bug was discovered by a team of researchers from Israel and Germany, who were able to intercept the video content while in transit from the Widevine module to the browser’s video player.
According to a report by Wired, the premium video is stored in an unprotected area of the computer’s memory for a short period of time. A third-party application developed by the researchers was able to tap into this unprotected area and extract the video content and save it to the disk.
The researchers reported this bug to Google, who replied back stating that the bug not only affects Chrome, but also the entire Chromium project. Other browsers such as Safari, Firefox, IE, Edge, Opera, etc are not affected as they are using different DRM modules.
