In
mid-March of last year, the World Health Organization officially declared the
world was facing a pandemic, and countries rushed to enact measures to stem the
spread. A popular measure to combat the pandemic was switching companies to
remote work. However, with little time to make the transition, many companies
had no time to enact proper security measures, leaving them vulnerable to a
number of new security risks. One of the most common were
attacks against the protocols used by employees to access corporate resources
remotely.
RDP is perhaps the most popular
remote desktop protocol and is used to access Windows or servers. After the
switch to remote work, bruteforce attacks against this protocol skyrocketed. In a bruteforce attack,
attackers test different usernames and passwords until the correct combination
is found-and they gain access to the corporate resources.
Over
the past year, while the total number of bruteforce attacks has ebbed and
flowed, they have continued to increase when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
According
to Kaspersky's telemetry, when the world went into lockdown in March 2020, the
total number of bruteforce attacks against RDP jumped from 93.1 mln worldwide in February 2020 to 277.4 mln
2020 in March-a 197 percent increase. From April 2020 onward, monthly attacks
never dipped below 300 million, and they reached a new high of 409 million
attacks worldwide in November.
In February 2021-nearly one year
from the start of the pandemic-there were 377.5 mln brute-force attacks-a far
cry from the 93.1 mln witnessed at the beginning of 2020.
"Remote work isn't going anywhere.
Even as companies begin considering re-opening their workplaces, many have
stated that they will continue to include remote work in their operating model
or pursue a hybrid format. That means it's likely these types of attacks
against remote desktop protocols will continue to occur at a rather high rate.
2020 made it clear that companies need to update their security infrastructure,
and a good place to start is providing stronger protection for their RDP
access," said Dmitry Galov, security expert at Kaspersky.
Read more about the biggest evolutions in the threat
landscape since the pandemic began on Securelist.
To keep your company safe
from bruteforce attacks, Kaspersky experts recommend: