The Philippines registered almost 5 million remote desktop protocol (RDP) attacks last year, the second lowest in Southeast Asia, according to the latest data from global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
Kaspersky reported blocking 61.4 million Bruteforce attacks eyeing businesses in Southeast Asia last year. These were detected and foiled by Kaspersky Business to Business products installed in companies of various sizes in the region.
Of the total, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand registered the highest number of RDP attacks with 26 million,11.7 million and 10.2 million, respectively.
Singapore has over 6 million incidents, the Philippines has 4.6 million, and Malaysia has the lowest number at nearly 3 million Bruteforce attempts.
“Bruteforce attack is not a threat companies should ignore. The use of third-party services for data exchange, employees working on home computers, and potentially insecure Wi-Fi networks, and the use of remote-access tools like RDP remain to be a headache for corporate infosec teams,” said Adrian Hia, Kaspersky managing director for Asia Pacific.
The Bruteforce attack is a method for guessing a password or an encryption key that involves systematically trying all possible combinations of characters until a correct one is found. A successful Bruteforce attack allows an attacker to obtain valid user credentials.
The RDP is widely used by both system administrators and less-technical users to control servers and other PCs remotely.
A successful Bruteforce generic RDP attack allows an attacker to gain remote access to the targeted host computer.
“We cannot discount that artificial intelligence modules and algorithms can be used to break corporate log-in and password pairs faster. And once threat actors gain remote access to your corporate computers, the possibility of financial and even reputational damage they can do becomes endless. Businesses here should beef up their endpoint and network security posture to defend themselves against smarter AI-based Bruteforce attacks,” Hia said.
Encouraging companies to take a step further in defending their security perimeters, Kaspersky said its integrated software solution includes a set of functions for event monitoring and management, Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform.
