I think almost all of us have used the Remote Desktop Protocol or RDP at some point in our lives. It is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft to enable the connection between hosts over the Internet through a graphical user interface. If you want to connect to remote hosts and work, this is a mostly used protocol. But, as we already know, data transfer through the Internet is unsecured by default. So, the security of the Remote Desktop Protocol calls for a question.

How secure is the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)?

Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is not very secure. Remote Desktop Protocol usually uses native RDP encryption to transfer data between connected hosts. But, this encryption is not very strong. As a result, RDP with native RDP encryption is vulnerable to attacks like the MITM or Man-In-The-Middle attack (What is the Man-In-The-Middle attack?).

RDP is also vulnerable to Denial of Service Attack or DoS. Originally, if you open an RDP session, the login screen of the server opens for you. And if an attacker abuses that and opens a large number of RDP sessions, it may lead to a DoS attack.

RDP sessions are also susceptible to in-memory user credentials harvesting, which can lead to the pass-the-hash attack (What is the pass-the-hash attack?).

How to make the Remote Desktop Protocol more secure?

From RDP 6.0 onwards, Microsoft has introduced Network Level Authentication. It establishes a secure connection between the hosts before any data transfer is made. In this protocol, user authentication is required before a full Remote Desktop connection is established. And until then fewer resources of the server are used. It helps in mitigating Denial of Service or DoS attacks. It also establishes an SSL/TLS connection and transfers data in a secure encrypted format.

In RDP settings, one has to click and select Network Level Authentication to use this feature.

So, be informed about the security issues of the software you use and take proper steps to stay safe and secure. I hope this helps. Interested readers who want to know more about how different malware and cyberattacks work and how we can prevent them may want to refer to the book “A Guide To Cyber Security.”