SoK: Identifying and Unifying Limitations, Security Threats & Vulnerabilities in Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is growing as fast as anyone can imagine, and it is now a multi-billion dollar industry. AM has become popular in a variety of sectors, such as automotive, aerospace, biomedical, and pharmaceutical, for producing parts/ components/ subsystems. However, current AM technologies can face vast risks of security issues and privacy loss. For the security of the AM process, many researchers are working on various defense mechanisms to countermeasure such security concerns and find efficient ways to eliminate those risks. Researchers have also been conducting experiments to establish a secure framework for the user's privacy and security components. This systematization of knowledge (SoK) paper consists of four sections. In the first section, we explore the relevant limitations of additive manufacturing in terms of printing capability, security, and possible solutions. The second section presents different kinds of attacks on AM and their effects. The next part analyzes and discusses the mechanisms and frameworks for access control and authentication for AM devices. The final section examines the security issues in various industrial sectors and provides observations on the security of the additive manufacturing process.