Security News > 2021 > September > Attacks against Remote Desktop Protocol endpoints have exploded this year, warns ESET's latest Threat Report

Security specialist ESET's latest Threat Report warns of a massive increase in attacks on Remote Desktop Protocol endpoints - and new activity from the Nobelium gang against European government organisations.

ESET's figures show attacks on RDP servers having gone up 103.9 per cent since its T1 report in June - it publishes three a year - representing a total of 55 billion detected brute-force attacks, thanks in no small part to a campaign focused on Spanish targets.

"It seemed in T1 2021 that the growth of RDP attack attempts would be slowing down," ESET security awareness specialist Ondrej Kubovič told.

"T2 2021 brought a bit of a surprise as the detections of RDP accelerated again. The trend suggests further growth in attack attempts and probably quite a steep one in T3, as this is typically the busiest part of the year."

"The attack shutting down the operations of Colonial Pipeline - the largest pipeline company in the US - and the supply-chain attack leveraging a vulnerability in the Kaseya IT management software, sent shockwaves that were felt not only in the cybersecurity industry."

The report also raised an alarm about targeted attacks by the Nobelium advanced persistent threat group, believed to be linked to the Russian government and accused of being behind the attack on SolarWinds' Orion IT monitoring platform last year which gave it a route into US government networks and the nation's courts system.

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