Newswise — As manufacturing systems become more connected, the cyberthreat grows with them. Saman Zonouz has spent years documenting how vulnerable smart manufacturing environments are. He’s an associate professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he co-leads the Cyber-Physical Security Lab with Raheem Beyah, Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. "Disrupting the manufacturing sector doesn't just shut down individual shops. It can directly impact national security and public safety," Zonouz said. Because manufacturing is one of 16 federally designated critical infrastructure sectors, it is deeply intertwined with energy, water, and defense, meaning disruptions can cascade far beyond the factory floor. The threats Zonouz documents go beyond ransomware. His research has demonstrated how adversaries can insert logic bombs into design files, compromising Computer Numerical Control machines or 3D printers. "We've shown how logic bombs can be inserted remotely into design files so that everything looks normal when the part is printed, but once it's in operation, the attacker can decide when it fails," Zonouz said, citing drone propellers, aircraft wings, and power grid transformer components as examples where invisible sabotage could have catastrophic consequences. Internet-wide scans conducted by his team found that many shop-floor controllers are directly exposed to the internet, with no meaningful barrier between an adversary and the machines running a production line. Imported equipment compounds the risk, because controllers and firmware from unknown developers may carry unintentional vulnerabilities or deliberately planted backdoors. "In manufacturing, many controllers and machines can still be accessed easily from outside," Zonouz said, echoing the kind of supply chain exposure seen in high-profile attacks on widely used software platforms. His prescription is straightforward but still largely unimplemented across the sector: Build security into the system design rather than adding it