Global cybersecurity company Kaspersky reports blocking more than 23M bruteforce attacks eyeing businesses in Southeast Asia (SEA) for the first six months of 2024.

A bruteforce attack is a method employed by cybercriminals to guess login info, encryption keys, or find a hidden web page by systematically attempting all possible character combinations until they find the correct one. Successful bruteforce attacks allow attackers to obtain personal data and valuable information, plant and spread a malware, and even hijack the system for malicious activities.

A total of 23,491,775 Bruteforce.Generic.RDP were detected and foiled by Kaspersky B2B products installed in companies of various sizes in the region from the period of January to June.

Remote Desktop Protocol (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 PCs remotely.

A Bruteforce.Generic.RDP attack attempts to find a valid RDP login / password pair by systematically checking all possible passwords until a correct one is found. When successful, it allows an attacker to gain remote access to the targeted host computer.

Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand registered the highest number of RDP attacks for the first half of the year, with over 8.4 million, 5.7 million and 4.2 million attacks respectively. Meanwhile, Singapore has more than 1.7 million incidents, the Philippines has over 2.2 million, and Malaysia with the lowest number of just over 1 million bruteforce attacks.