Security News > 2020 > April > Brute force attacks against remote desktop apps skyrocket during pandemic lockdown
Kaspersky Labs is reporting a massive increase in brute force attacks against Microsoft's RDP protocol since the beginning of March, coinciding perfectly with coronavirus lockdowns and increased numbers of people working from home.
Brute force attacks are decidedly blunt in their approach: Rather than try to sneak in a backdoor or bypass security, a brute force attack simply tries logging in to a system with a known username and all possible passwords.
According to Kaspersky, the target of these attacks has mostly been Microsoft's RDP, which it calls one of the most popular application-level remote access protocols available.
RDP is used to remote connect to Windows computers and servers, and if an attacker manages to find one of the poorly secured RDP servers they're seeking it could mean a breach of massive proportions.
Brute force attack threats against RDP and similar systems are just one more headache for cybersecurity professionals to worry about in the coming weeks and months until workers return to offices.