An October 1, 2020 article in Materials  Today carries a warning about the burgeoning use of additive manufacturing technologies: the very ease of manufacturing composite parts via 3D printing also makes it very easy for counterfeiters to copy parts and to steal trade secrets from them. The story reports that creative hackers have been using machine learning and three-dimensional imaging and reconstruction techniques to reverse engineer 3-D printed parts. Dr. Nikhil Gupta, a professor of materials science and engineering at NYU Tandon, and a member of the university’s Center for Cybersecurity, is quoted in the story as saying “Machine learning can even automate this process… [to] produce high quality replicas by unauthorized personnel.”

The article is based on a scholarly paper that Gupta coauthored with a team of Tandon researchers. The paper was published in late August in Composites Science and Technology. Read the full Materials Today article here.