FLAW3D: A Trojan-Based Cyber Attack on the Physical Outcomes of Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) systems such as 3-D printers use inexpensive microcontrollers that rarely feature cybersecurity defenses. This is a risk, especially given the rising threat landscape within the larger digital manufacturing domain. In this work, we demonstrate this risk by presenting the design and study of a malicious Trojan (the FLAW3D bootloader) for AVR-based Marlin-compatible 3-D printers (
$>$
100 commercial models). We show that the Trojan can hide from programming tools, and even within tight design constraints (less than 1.7 KB in size), it can compromise the quality of additively manufactured prints and reduce tensile strengths by up to 50%.