FLAW3D: A Trojan-Based Cyber Attack on the Physical Outcomes of Additive Manufacturing

Hammond Pearce; Kaushik Yanamandra; Nikhil Gupta; Ramesh Karri

doi:10.1109/TMECH.2022.3179713

FLAW3D: A Trojan-Based Cyber Attack on the Physical Outcomes of Additive Manufacturing

Hammond Pearce, Kaushik Yanamandra, Nikhil Gupta, Ramesh Karri

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) systems such as 3-D printers use inexpensive microcontrollers that rarely feature cybersecurity defenses. This is a risk, especially given the rising threat landscape within the larger digital manufacturing domain. In this work, we demonstrate this risk by presenting the design and study of a malicious Trojan (the FLAW3D bootloader) for AVR-based Marlin-compatible 3-D printers (>100 commercial models). We show that the Trojan can hide from programming tools, and even within tight design constraints (less than 1.7 KB in size), it can compromise the quality of additively manufactured prints and reduce tensile strengths by up to 50%.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	5361-5370
Number of pages	10
Journal	IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
Volume	27
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TMECH.2022.3179713
State	Published - Dec 1 2022

Keywords

3D printing
Additive manufacturing (AM)
bootloader trojan
cyber-physical systems (CPSs)
cybersecurity
firmware trojan

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering
Computer Science Applications
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Access to Document

10.1109/TMECH.2022.3179713

Cite this

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abstract = "Additive manufacturing (AM) systems such as 3-D printers use inexpensive microcontrollers that rarely feature cybersecurity defenses. This is a risk, especially given the rising threat landscape within the larger digital manufacturing domain. In this work, we demonstrate this risk by presenting the design and study of a malicious Trojan (the FLAW3D bootloader) for AVR-based Marlin-compatible 3-D printers (>100 commercial models). We show that the Trojan can hide from programming tools, and even within tight design constraints (less than 1.7 KB in size), it can compromise the quality of additively manufactured prints and reduce tensile strengths by up to 50%.",

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FLAW3D: A Trojan-Based Cyber Attack on the Physical Outcomes of Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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