Help Net Security Researchers spot massive increase in RDP attack attempts The COVID-19 pandemic continued to influence the cybercrime landscape in 2020, ESET reveals. Most notably, the new attack surface created by the shift to work from home brought further growth of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) attacks, albeit at a slower rate compared to previous quarters. RDP attack attempts surge Between Q1 and Q4 2020, telemetry recorded a staggering 768% increase in RDP attack attempts. “RDP security is not to be underestimated especially due to ransomware, which is commonly deployed through RDP exploits, and, with its increasingly aggressive tactics, poses a great risk to both private and public sectors. As the security of remote work gradually improves, the boom in attacks exploiting RDP is expected to slow down – we already saw some signs of this in Q4,” explains Roman Kováč, Chief Research Officer at ESET.