Media Watch

Mohammad Al Faruque of the Advanced Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems lab. "According to the fundamental laws of physics, energy is not consumed; it's converted from one form to another -- electromagnetic to kinetic, for example. Some forms of energy are translated in meaningful and useful ways; others become emissions, which may unintentionally disclose secret information," he explained, in a complicated way of saying making stuff = sound clues. Like, you could fake a chair by listening to the chipping sounds of a carpenter.

Led by Mohammad Al Faruque, director of the Advanced Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems lab, the team found that placing a smartphone alongside the machine as it printed objects layer-by-layer enabled them to capture the acoustic signals. It says that these recordings contain information about the precise movement of the nozzle, and that information can later be used to reverse engineer the item being printed.

To the average visitor to the RapidTech prototyping center at University of California, Irvine, the methodical buzz of its 3-D printers would be nothing more than background noise. But to Mohammad Al Faruque, that hum is valuable information.

The research team, led by Mohammad Al Faruque, an electrical engineer, computer scientist and director of UCI's Advanced Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems Lab, discovered – almost by accident – that it is possible for an ordinary smartphone to record the very precise sounds made by a 3D printer during operation. While this may seem innocuous and even pointless, unless you’re trying to create a very avant-garde musical composition, those sounds carry very specific information about the printer’s movements. By analyzing the recording, a would-be hacker can actually reverse engineer the object being printed and then recreate it somewhere else.