RDP Worm spreading (August 2011)

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PenultimateHop

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#513712 29-Aug-2011 22:28

Regs: the RDP protocol itself has not, to my knowledge, had any breaches that have enabled anyone to gain access without a valid username/password.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-065.mspx

There are others, too.

Regs: You can use two-factor authentication with smartcard + username & password with RDP which is built in to windows. You also have the ability to install 3rd party two-factor auth products onto the 'server'(*) such as RSA SecureID, a USB Key solution, or an SMS-based one-time-code.

(*) some two-factor solutions also work on xp/vista/7 as well as on the win server platform.

Yes, you can do all of that. Or you can use a VPN which gives you all of that, mitigates from exploiting the RDP protocol itself (although the VPN is of course exploitable, but now you must exploit both the VPN and the RDP to compromise the system). And a VPN is more versatile over time than RDP.

Security is about layers...

Regs

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Snowflake

#513738 29-Aug-2011 23:47

PenultimateHop:
Regs: the RDP protocol itself has not, to my knowledge, had any breaches that have enabled anyone to gain access without a valid username/password.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-065.mspx
There are others, too.

denial of service, sure, i remember this one. but have there been any instances where a protocol exploit has resulted in a breach of the network hosting the RDP service? I don't recall any.

Security is about layers...

Yep - fair point.

There are a lot of VPNs out there that use single factor auth, are open for all protocols and destination IPs, and accessible by poor username/password combinations. When compared with a direct RDP session to a terminal server (which would typically be locked down for regular users) I'd say that the RDP would be the more 'secure' of the two..

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cws82us

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#513739 29-Aug-2011 23:50

there are programs out there easy to use that scan ip ranges for RDP. poeple really need to change the passwords to something more hardder and so easy.

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jaymz

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#513955 30-Aug-2011 15:12

PenultimateHop:
Security is about layers...

Agreed too.

I say the below from a enterprise support level.

Nearly every security measure has one weakness, your users.

Users are simple creatures who want things to work nice an easy. However they are also un-informed when it comes to security (not all but most).
It is the role of the systems administrator to enforce strong password policies accross the network and educate users of the risks involved with weak passwords. If you let the users have a password of 1234 or password, then in my mind you (as the administrator) are just as much to blame as the user.

VPN's are great, however they can cause administrative overheads that the user/client may not want to pay for.

RDP (as mentioned above) has proven hard to break/exploit if at all.

We have seen the attacks already on some of our servers, and they come from a range of IP's. By default we do not open our file servers or the file servers of our clients to the internet via RDP. we use our own LogMeIn or Kaseya to get connection to each server.

jaymz

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#513959 30-Aug-2011 15:15

cws82us: there are programs out there easy to use that scan ip ranges for RDP. poeple really need to change the passwords to something more hardder and so easy.

Your post made my brain cry

Did you mean to say:

"There are programs out there, that are easy to use, that scan IP ranges for RDP. People really need to change their passwords to more complex ones and it is so easy to do"

aaristotle

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#513987 30-Aug-2011 16:09

gjm: Is this spreading any other way apart from having to have 3389 open on the internet?

We have had a small remote site with a number of PCs infected, where none of the PCs have any method of being accessed remotely via RDP (and none of the PCs had any of the passwords in the list used). VPN access is available but firewall logs record the last VPN access as being a number of months ago.

To top it off the NOD32 antivirus still doesn't detect the MONDO worm and we are having to resort to Microsoft Security Essentials to detect and clean it up. I use to give NOD32 a 10/10 rating but the lack of a signature update over 36 hours after MS have released an update is really affecting my confidence in the product.

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Ragnor

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#514000 30-Aug-2011 17:13

PenultimateHop:

Yes, you can do all of that. Or you can use a VPN which gives you all of that, mitigates from exploiting the RDP protocol itself (although the VPN is of course exploitable, but now you must exploit both the VPN and the RDP to compromise the system). And a VPN is more versatile over time than RDP.

Security is about layers...

Yes +1

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