Defending Side Channel Attacks in Cyber-Physical Additive Layer Manufacturing Systems

Abstract:

Cyber-physical additive layer manufacturing, e.g. 3D printing has become a promising technology for providing cost, time, and space effective solution by reducing the gap between the designers and the manufacturers. However, the concern for the protection of intellectual property is arising in conjunction with the capabilities of supporting massive innovative designs and rapid prototyping. Intellectual property in the additive layer manufacturing system consists of: i) geometric design of an object; ii) attributes of an object; iii) process information; and iv) machine information. In our project, we want to demonstrate that during the life-cycle of the additive layer manufacturing system, the intellectual property information contained in the cyber domain can be recovered / reconstructed through attacks occurring during the manufacturing process in the physical domain through various non-intrusive techniques. In our current work, utilizing acoustics emanated by the 3D printer through the side channel, we have successfully reconstructed the 3D-test objects and its corresponding G-code (cyber domain data) with high axis prediction accuracy of 78.35% and length prediction error of just 17.82%. Our next goal is to explore more side channels for attack on additive manufacturing, and create both machinedependent and machine-independent defense mechanisms for avoiding such an attack. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the very first approach to create defense mechanisms against such attacks occurring in the physical domain to get access to information of the cyber domain.