3D-printed gun pioneer claims hash-scrambling tool defeats New York printer blocking law

Cody Wilson, creator of the world's first 3D-printed firearm, says he has built a tool designed to defeat the gun-detection software New York now requires on new 3D printers. As The Verge reports, Wilson has named the tool "Hochulization," a deliberate jab at Governor Kathy Hochul, who pushed through the first US law mandating gun file detection software on new printers earlier this year as part of New York's FY 2027 budget.

Wilson, based in Austin, Texas, frames the project as self-defense against state intrusion into open-source 3D printing, which he views as invasive digital surveillance. His company, Defense Distributed, runs DEFCAD, which he describes as the world's largest 3D gun file repository, hosting more than 200,000 designs and parts such as suppressors.

How the workaround works

Hash-based detection gives every file a unique fingerprint, computed by an algorithm, and blocks any print whose fingerprint matches a database of known gun files. Hochulization appends a series of bytes to a file so that its hash changes while the physical object it produces does not: a printed suppressor or firearm would still function as designed.

Wilson told The Verge the approach is deliberately minimal, intended to ensure no complete hash library can ever be assembled. He says he has begun applying the treatment to DEFCAD's 3D files by default, plans to make the tool available to DEFCAD users, and intends to release it as open source so anyone holding a gun file can scramble its hash and potentially evade detection.

New York and California push mandates

Hochul has argued the software is necessary to shut down what she describes as a black-market channel for untraceable plastic guns. Her office did not respond to The Verge's request for comment on Wilson's workaround.

California is moving in the same direction. Assembly Bill 2047, introduced by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, has advanced to the Senate floor and would require new printers manufactured or sold in the state to carry print-blocking software. The state Department of Justice would publish a roster of compliant models, and printers not on the list would be banned from sale or transfer starting in December 2029. A spokesperson for Bauer-Kahan declined to comment on Wilson's project.

Notably, neither law specifies what the blocking software should actually do. That detail is being left to working groups of experts in manufacturing technology, artificial intelligence and firearms regulation.

An arms race over detection

According to The Verge, a pure hash-matching system produces few false positives but, as Wilson's project demonstrates, may be trivially easy to bypass. Broader AI-based systems that analyse a file's geometry would likely stop more prints, but would also flag more legitimate objects as firearms.

Wilson says his team went further, building its own AI gun-detection model — trained partly on public and non-public files from DEFCAD and modelled on claims made by companies such as Spain's Print&Go — and then finding ways to defeat it using adversarial noise. His stated goal is to force policymakers to choose between a more aggressive scanning regime and no scheme at all.

Solomon Diamond, an associate engineering professor at Dartmouth College, told The Verge that Hochulization would likely bypass a hash-based detector on a technical level, but that such a system is not necessarily useless as policy. Many users would not bother altering a hash, and DEFCAD already requires setting up an account with a linked email address, a barrier for casual, less motivated downloaders.

The backdrop is a small but rising threat. The New York Police Department confiscated one 3D-printed gun in 2021 and 109 in 2024, and gun policy group Everytown documented similar increases across 20 other cities. Printed firearms remain a fraction of conventional gun seizures in a country where guns are estimated to outnumber people, but the technology has advanced far beyond Wilson's single-shot 2013 Liberator. The FGC-9 can fire multiple high-velocity rounds without breaking and has turned up with neo-Nazi cells in Europe and rebel groups fighting Myanmar's military junta. The Verge also notes that Luigi Mangione, who admitted to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and is awaiting sentencing, allegedly used a partially printed pistol frame and a printed suppressor.

Why it matters

The exchange previews a cat-and-mouse cycle that software mandates alone may not win. If hash-based blocking can be undone by appending a few bytes, regulators must either accept a leaky deterrent or push for deeper inspection of what printers are asked to make — a step that makers, digital rights experts and entertainment industry figures have already warned would extend surveillance to everyone's creative work, not just gun files. The outcome will shape not only ghost gun enforcement but how far governments can reach into consumer fabrication devices.