Africa Sees a Big Decline in RDP Attacks

Remote work RDP attacks
Photo by Shamin Haky on Unsplash

The amount of brute force attacks against the remote desktop protocol (RDP) across Africa has dramatically fallen in Q2 2022 by 53% compared to the previous quarter, according to Kaspersky telemetry. There may be a number of causes for this declining trend.

The workforce’s shift from remote to hybrid work, the disclosure of RDP vulnerabilities in the first quarter of the year, or organizations implementing secure RDP setups for their remote workers might all be contributing factors.

Employees frequently utilize RDP to connect remotely to company resources, servers, and networks. Cybercriminals frequently employ attacks against RDP as a way to identify security flaws and target machines connected to a network in an organization. Cybercriminals can connect into the system without the victim’s consent and install ransomware or steal sensitive data by taking advantage of unsecured or improperly configured RDP settings.

The number of detections in Africa during the first quarter of 2022 was 4 345 883 compared to 2 056 076 during the second. RDP assaults have decreased, but organizations should continue to be concerned about them as they accept the new reality of hybrid work.

According to the nations, South Africa had the most detections in the second quarter of 2022 (1 400 337) despite a 41% drop from the first quarter. Kenya came in second with 566 666 detections and a 66% drop, while Nigeria came in third with 89 073 detections and a 17% drop.

“Remote working comes with security risks and threats and hybrid working is no exception. The fact that employees can access company network anytime from anywhere across devices is a trend to be adopted and adapted to with caution. No doubt companies are trying hard to ensure employees are well-connected to work more collaboratively, and have access to data to meet business needs, but strong and strict security measures need to be in place to avoid any slip-ups. Incorrect RDP setting, weak passwords, or use of public WiFI can result in serious setbacks.”Maher Yamout, senior security researcher, Kaspersky

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