A Blockchain-Based G-Code Protection Approach for Cyber-Physical Security in Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

As an emerging technology, additive manufacturing (AM) is able to fabricate products with complex geometries using various materials. In particular, cyber-enabled AM systems have recently become widely applied in many real-world applications. It significantly improves the flexibility and productivity of AM but poses the system under high risks of cyber-physical attacks. For example, cyber-physical attack could maliciously tamper the product design and process parameters, which, in turn, leads to significant alteration of the desired properties in AM products. Therefore, there is an urgent need in incorporating advanced technologies to improve the cyber-physical security for the cyber-enabled AM systems. In this study, two common types of cyber-physical attacks regarding the G-code security were investigated, namely, unintended design modifications and intellectual property theft. To effectively secure the G-code against these two attacks, a new methodology is developed in this study, which consists of a novel blockchain-based data storage approach and an effective asymmetry encryption technique. The proposed method was also applied to a real-world AM case for ensuring the cyber-physical security of the face shield fabrication, which is critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the proposed methodology, malicious tampering can be accurately detected in a timely manner and meanwhile the risk of unauthorized access of the G-code file will be greatly eliminated as well.

Digital Twin-Driven Remaining Useful Life Prediction for Gear Performance Degradation: A Review

“…How to reduce the dependence of the method on the amount of data requires a lot of research. For the future, integrate DT, physical model-based method, and virtual model-based method to establish an integrated learning prediction model to achieve complementary advantages, of course, this is a more complex modeling process, but [240,241] has also tried. It cannot be ignored that DT has shown a strong advantage in gear RUL forecast and performance degradation assessment, the dots of buds have already grown, and the moment it blooms, it will attract the world's attention.…”

How Can We Provide Additively Manufactured Parts with a Fingerprint? A Review of Tagging Strategies in Additive Manufacturing

“…However, a potential shortcoming of deterministic marks is that they must be integrated into the part at the CAD level and, therefore, they are not able to avoid counterfeiting in case the digital design file is copied or stolen, unless additional measures are put in place to protect the file itself [ 21 , 22 , 30 ]. This is a critical issue for AM that is often defined as “digital manufacturing”, because it relies on a workflow that is mostly digital until printing [ 13 ].…”

“…In this regard, the establishment of a secure strategy to ensuring provenance, quality compliance and intellectual property protection in AM largely depends on existing knowledge and new achievements in materials science and technology. However, as already happens for diamonds and fashion products [ 67 ], emerging trends in the literature suggest that, in the future, traceability in AM will also benefit from digital platforms and especially from blockchain-based solutions, where the virtual twin of the physical object is safely stored in the blockchain and the tagging feature becomes the hyperlink between the physical and cyber worlds [ 20 , 23 , 30 , 51 , 68 , 69 ]. To this aim, materials engineers will be asked to integrate manufacturing technology and information systems.…”

“…Naturally, this was a very rough attempt to grab a general picture of the state of the art, and relevant papers may have remained out of sight because of indexing with different keywords. Furthermore, as exemplified in Table 1 [ 4 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 16 , 17 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ], the wide range of different terms used as keywords in published papers makes it difficult to conduct an exhaustive bibliographic search.…”

Induced alterations driven compromised structural properties in additively manufactured products

“…Generally, there are several challenges to G-code protection, these challenges include (Shi et al , 2021): G-code commands have a simple and fixed structure that easily can be modified through a cyberattack; due to the layer-by-layer style, a small, targeted (site specific and temporal) attack can impact the fabrication process significantly; and code file needs to be updated periodically thereby resulting in high maintenance costs. …”