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I thought I was following along but then it got to this and I had no clue where that key came from:

“They must be encrypted with AES-128-CBC using key=”)1Zorxo^fAhGlh$#” and IV="aoAkfwk+#1.6G{dE”. Only system.ext4 must be converted to sparse image before the encryption.”

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That's an example of why you should use public key cryptography for loading data from untrusted source.

AES is symmetric which means any encrypted payload need key used for encryption for decryption.

Which means it is on device, just need to dump it. And you can now use same key to encode new firmware

How does that help in this scenario? The need for the unencrypted data necessitates the decryption key on device. Putting it in accessible software rather than a tpm is the problem here.

That said, I own the item and I should be able to do what I want with it without technology trying to limit me artificially.

If it were encrypted with a private key the device would only have a public key and you wouldn't be able to encrypt your own version of the software.

It came from the disassembly of the "uboot.rom (part of lk.rom)" but it is not shown, it is only mentioned.

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