Malicious manipulations of CAM Software in Additive Manufacturing using Desktop 3D Printer Software

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies are getting increasingly important in a growing number of industries, ranging from normal consumer item production to the fabrication of functional parts, or even for safety-critical applications. The rise in usage of AM, combined with the hyper-connectivity in modern manufacturing, makes security of AM systems a topic of interest. While attacks on the design files and the printable files were already demonstrated, the feasibility and impact of manipulations of the Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) Software (i.e. Slicer), which transforms design files into manufacturing instructions, was not yet shown.

This thesis explores several possible malicious manipulations in the slicer workflow, which change for example part geometry, path generation or infill. To validate the attacks and show possible effects, a proof-of-concept manipulation of a popular desktop slicing software Cura with several different print manipulations was implemented.The effects of were validated with a bend test which shows that the used manipulations have in fact a detrimental effect on the properties of the print. Hereby attacks, which take advantage of the special properties of the manufacturing process, proved especially effective.