Offramps: An FPGA-Based Intermediary for Analysis and Modification of Additive Manufacturing Control Systems

Cybersecurity threats in Additive Manufacturing (AM) are an increasing concern as AM adoption continues to grow. AM is now being used for parts in the aerospace, transportation, and medical domains. Threat vectors which allow for part compromise are particularly concerning, as any failure in these domains would have life-threatening consequences. A major challenge to investigation of AM part-compromises comes from the difficulty in evaluating and benchmarking both identified threat vectors as well as methods for detecting adversarial actions. In this work, we introduce a generalized platform for systematic analysis of attacks against and defenses for 3D printers. Our “OFFRAMPS” platform is based on the open-source 3D printer control board “RAMPS.“ Offramps allows analysis, recording, and modification of all control signals and I/O for a 3D printer. We show the efficacy of Offramps by presenting a series of case studies based on several Trojans, including ones identified in the literature, and show that Offramps can both emulate and detect these attacks, i.e., it can both change and detect arbitrary changes to the g-code print commands.