Security implications of allowing remote desktop

Question

I recently purchased an iPhone and downloaded the RDP Lite application, which allows me to remote into my home computer. Typically, I've always used LogMeIn for remoting and always had the built-in Windows option disabled.

Now, what's to stop someone from running some sort of brute-force login attack on the administrator account of my machine? Are there safeguards in place to prevent this?

Answer 1

Here's a good document on some of the attacks and mitigations. It's a bit dated, but interesting. In addition to changing your port, you should also change the name of your Administrator account and set up a honey pot dummy account.

Answer 2

• Make sure that you're using a secure password.

• Change the default RDP port on your computer from 3389 to something different. That can make it less obvious that your RDP port is open.

• Rename the Administrator account (link for XP)