A hacker could breach a company's network, hack a 3D printer, and change operational details to produce defective products that could drive a company into bankruptcy.
This is a new type of cyber-attack described in a study called Manufacturing and Security Challenges in 3D Printing, funded by the Office of Naval Research and conducted by researchers from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
The research reveals that 3-D printing, or AM (additive manufacturing), is just another way in which hackers could seriously impact a company's normal operations.
In most businesses today, if they use these printers for their production department, the process begins after a designer creates the object in a 3-D computer-aided design environment and sends a CAD file to the 3D printer operator.
The operator then runs the file on the printer and creates the object, which can be a complete company product or just one of the product's pieces.
Researchers say these CAD files fail to include a very important detail, which concerns the orientation of the printer head.
3-D printing works by “breaking” a solid object into millions of pieces. The 3D printer head creates a sheet of material, layer by layer. Sometimes, the 3D printer doesn’t create the entire layer, but does so in several strips/lines, from one side to the other.
The orientation of these lines, from layer to layer, is usually a zigzag pattern to give the object maximum physical strength and durability.
How these lines and layers are drawn is not included in any way in the CAD file, and designers cannot control this aspect of the 3D printing process.
The researchers argue that a hacker who compromises a 3D printer could, in theory, change the device's basic settings to modify this pattern, creating an inherent weakness that is not visible to the human eye. A change of a few degrees between these layers could have a huge impact on the final parameters of the product.
The 3D printer still creates the final object that looks like it should be, but it malfunctions or breaks. Indirectly, any company that does not produce products that meet the standards the customer demands will lose its customers and ultimately be destroyed entirely.
The researchers argue that a hacker or any determined company could use attacks on their competitors' 3D printers to gain a competitive advantage or even drive them out of the industry.
