KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 4): Cybercriminals have been relentless in pursuing Southeast Asia’s (SEA) remote workers, according to Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider.

In a statement on Tuesday (Oct 4), the firm said as hybrid and remote work continue to be the norm in Southeast Asia (SEA), it has foiled over 47 million Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) attacks during the first six months of 2022.

It said the number of Bruteforce.Generic.RDP targeting remote workers in the region logged a total of 47,802,037 incidents from January to June this year.

On average, Kaspersky solutions blocked 265,567 brute-force attacks in SEA daily, it said.

During this period, Kaspersky said it secured most users from Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand from this type of threat.

These statistics are based on detection verdicts of Kaspersky products received from users who consented to provide statistical data.

RDP is Microsoft’s proprietary protocol, providing a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer through a network.

RDP is widely used by both system administrators and less-technical users to control servers and other personal computers (PCs) remotely.

A Bruteforce.Generic.RDP attack attempts to find a valid RDP login/password pair by systematically checking all possible passwords until the correct one is found.

Kaspersky General Manager for Southeast Asia, Yeo Siang Tiong said working from home or anywhere out of the office requires employees to log in to corporate resources remotely from their personal devices. One of the most common tools used for this purpose is RDP.

“Microsoft 365 is still the preferred software used by enterprises and SEA boasts of more than 680 million people, half of which are under 30 and are highly tech-savvy.

“So, we see the use of this protocol to continue as remote working remains the norm and expect that malicious actors will continue their chase to compromise companies and organisations here through brute-force attacks,” said Yeo.

Kaspersky said while corporate and perimeter security remains important, the recent mass transition to remote or hybrid work has shown all too clearly that even the best corporate security cannot compensate for a lack of user awareness.

It said that especially with 60% of companies allowing employees to use their own devices for work, businesses must train their staff in cybersecurity best practices, so that they are aware of the risks and understand how to work securely with corporate resources.