The Sound of 3D Printing Could be a Security Threat

A few years ago, in the midst of the 3D printer Kickstarter wars, a few startups attempted to attract business to a product by rhapsodizing about the joys of watching a 3D printed object take form. That always seemed like a pretty odd selling point, as watching an additive manufacturing (AM) system at work is only slightly more exciting than watching grass grow.

A few people also had fun with the sounds made by 3D printers during the build process, creating bizarre reproductions of the Imperial March and other nerd favorites. New research performed by the University of California, Irvine (UCI) has revealed those same printers were reporting more than Darth Vader’s arrival. The very sound of a AM system can be evaluated to determine what is being printed.

These 3D creations printed at UCI could be reverse engineered by recording the sounds made during production. Courtesy of UCI

Researchers were able to show that it is possible to determine what a 3D printer is building by recording the sounds made by the print head. Those same sounds can also be reverse engineered to reproduce the object being printed. In testing, the research team was able to recreate a 3D printed object with 90% accuracy just by processing the sounds made during a build.

This, of course, could lead to security issues with 3D printing. In the age of the smartphone, nearly everyone carries an extremely capable recording device at all times.

“In many manufacturing plants, people who work on a shift basis don’t get monitored for their smartphones, for example,” said Mohammad Al Faruque, director of UCI’s advanced integrated cyber-physical systems lab. “If process and product information is stolen during the prototyping phases, companies stand to incur large financial losses. There’s no way to protect these systems from such an attack today, but possibly there will be in the future.”

Al Faruque has suggested engineers begin to research methods of jamming or muffling the sounds of 3D printing in order to maintain operational security. Considering that prototyping still makes up much of the work done by 3D printers, it doesn’t require much imagination to see how industrial espionage might try to take advantage of this particular hole in security.

Below you’ll find a video demonstration of the sounds made by a 3D printer.

Source: UCI