Researchers embed ‘fingerprints’ in 3D printed parts

According to Washington University, Netanel Raviv, assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, led a team from the departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering that has developed a way to create an embedded fingerprint in 3D printed parts that would withstand the item being broken, allowing authorities to gain information for forensic investigation, such as the identity of the printer or the person who owns it and the time and place of printing.

Fingerprinting in 3D printing embeds unique, traceable data, such as timestamps, geolocations, and printer identification, into each item and allows items to be traced to the creator. While there are multiple ways to create fingerprints, none have looked at how these fingerprints may stand up to someone who tampers with or breaks the item into pieces.

Raviv’s team developed mathematical techniques to embed information into 3D printed objects in a robust way and coupled them with security mechanisms to ensure that 3D printers embedded those codes in the objects they print. The team’s framework, Secure Information Embedding and Extraction (SIDE), uses break-resilient, loss-tolerant embedding techniques that stand up against adversaries and act as a security mechanism.

The technique is built on research focused on creating a mathematical framework for an encoder that would recover original information bits from fragments of broken 3D printed objects resulting from adversarial tampering.

“This work opens up new venues for protecting the public from the harmful aspects of 3D printing via a combination of mathematical contributions and new security mechanisms,” said Raviv. “While SIDE has limitations in defending against resourceful attackers with strong expertise in 3D printing, it significantly raises the level of sophistication, prior knowledge, and expertise required from the adversary to remain undetected after committing the crime.”