Microsoft included Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) with its offerings for the first time in 1996. Since then, cybercriminals have been trying, sometimes with success, to hack into machines via this protocol and we’ve seen countless RDP attacks done by different malware types. But a troubling, growing trend of this brand of cyberattack, that started a few years ago, has been locking up systems with ransomware, crippling the targeted business temporarily at best. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) along with the US Department of Homeland Security recently released an alert stating, “Remote administration tools, such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), as an attack vector has been on the rise since mid-late 2016 with the rise of dark markets selling RDP Access.“
