Is your Remote Desktop session secure? Think twice.
With just a few clicks, a hacker can hijack your RDP session and steal your login credentials without even realizing it.
RDP, or Remote Desktop Protocol, is a popular tool among system administrators for managing servers remotely. However, if your network is not well configured, an attacker could easily take advantage of the situation and steal your login credentials.
Under normal circumstances, a client initiates an RDP session with the server. The server then sends the client a certificate to secure communication.
A self-signed certificate is typically generated and provided to the client on Windows servers.
Once the client accepts the certificate, the secure data exchange can begin.
If a hacker positions himself in the middle of the communication between the client and the server, effectively impersonating both, they can manipulate the connection.
The client, believing it is communicating directly with the server, will initiate an RDP session with the hacker, who then relays the request to the actual server.
In response, the server sends its certificate to the hacker, assuming it communicates with the client.
The hacker intercepts the server’s certificate, creates a self-signed certificate, and sends it to the client. If the client accepts this forged certificate, the hacker can decrypt and monitor the entire RDP communication.
You can watch this video for more details on the attack.
How to Protect Your Network from This Attack:
- While it may seem obvious, segmenting your network using VLANs is an effective mitigation.
Avoid placing computers and servers on the same network segment. Instead, organize your assets based on their criticality. For instance, assigning computers to a dedicated VLAN, domain controllers to a separate VLAN, HR servers to another, etc.
Ensure that communication between these VLANs is controlled and filtered through a firewall. For instance, devices in the contractors’ VLAN cannot access devices in the Users’ VLAN or Servers’ VLAN.
2. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Relying solely on passwords is insufficient for security; therefore, it is essential to strengthen authentication by enabling MFA, especially for high-privilege accounts such as domain administrators.
3. Use a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority and don’t trust self-signed certificates.
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