Never Trust the Manufacturer, Never Trust the Client: A Novel Method for Streaming STL Files for Secure Additive manufacturing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a secure streaming method for STL files in additive manufacturing, ensuring IP protection for both clients and manufacturers by segmenting files and translating them in real-time without trusting either party.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach for secure streaming of STL files using real-time translation, addressing trust issues between clients and manufacturers in additive manufacturing.

Findings

Secure streaming of STL files demonstrated in real-world setup

Protects design and process IPs from malicious attacks

Enables trustless collaboration in additive manufacturing

Abstract

While additive manufacturing has opened interesting avenues to reimagine manufacturing as a service (MaaS) platform, transmission of design files from client to manufacturer over networks opens up many cybersecurity challenges. Securing client's intellectual property (IP) especially from cyber-attacks emerges as a major challenge. Earlier works introduced streaming, instead of sharing process plan (G-code) files, as a possible solution. However, executing client's G-codes on manufacturer's machines exposes them to potential malicious G-codes. This paper proposes a viable approach when the client and manufacturer do not trust each other and both the client and manufacturer want to preserve their IP of designs and manufacturing process respectively. The proposed approach is based on segmenting and streaming design (STL) files and employing a novel machine-specific STL to G-code translator at the manufacturer's site in real-time for printing. This approach secures design and manufacturing process IPs as demonstrated in a real-world implementation.