Abdulelah Majed Almutairi

Cybersecurity Specialization · Cohort 2026

OrbShield: A Frame-Level Intrusion-Detection System for the CCSDS Telecommand Uplink

Recreate the security challenges of real space ground station infrastructure by simulating both the adversary and the defender against a satellite ground-to-space command link. The system implements a formal threat model for the CCSDS Telecommand Space Data Link Protocol and builds a parser for its command frames. The attacker role generates malicious telecommand traffic that reproduces real space-cyber attack techniques drawn from MITRE ATT&CK. The defender constructs a formal STRIDE threat model and an attack tree of the uplink, then engineers custom detection rules that catch each attack and maps these adversary behaviors. Finally, the detectors are quantitatively evaluated and assigned mission-criticality risk scores, producing a dashboard that supports proactive defense of satellite command infrastructure.

Read the final report (PDF)