Sabotaging Quality in Metal Additive Manufacturing: Powder Deposition Unit from the Security Perspective
Abstract
Additive Manufacturing (AM) enables rapid just-in-time and on-demand production. If applied in contexts such as Carrier Strike Groups (CSG), AM can drastically simplify logistics, reduce carrier and storage costs for spare parts, and allow CSG to perform their mission more efficiently. The benefits are only worthwhile, however, if adopting AM does not introduce unprecedented and unpredictable security vulnerabilities. Therefore the protection of AM after it is deployed in the Navy is an essential prerequisite to ensure a mission success. One of security threats in AM is ability to sabotage a manufactured part’s quality, such as reduction of its mechanical strength or fatigue life. To protect AM against sabotage attacks, it is essential to first understand how these attacks can be staged and what properties they will exhibit. The proposed project contributes substantially to this understanding by identifying what sabotage attacks are possible if an adversary can arbitrarily modify parameter of a powder deposition unit. As the powder deposition unit is an indispensable subsystem of any Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) machine, which is one of the dominant AM technologies in metal AM, such sabotage attacks are broadly applicable. In the course of this project, we will identify parameters of this unit that can be manipulated, analyze the effects of such manipulations, and provide an experimental verification of the identified attacks. Finally, we will identify possible indicators of an ongoing sabotage attack via a powder deposition unit. The outcome from this project will provide prerequisites necessary for the development of attack detection methods, and later automated tools. The proposed project has also a second valuable dimension. As AM is increasingly employed around the world, including potential adversary states, the proposed project will provide prerequisites for the development of AM-based offensive capabilities, similar to those of the Stuxnet. This is especially true because the methods investigated in the project are likely to be as potent as the modification of design files, which have been used in the majority of AM attacks published to date, while being significantly more stealthy. 1
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 26, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141812488
Entities
People
- Mark Yampolskiy
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of South Alabama