Start RdpGuard Dashboard and click the link next to RDP
RDP Protection Link in RdpGuard Dashboard
An RDP Settings dialog will open:
RDP Detection Engine Settings
Enable RDP protection - tick this check-box to enable system event-log based RDP protection.
If this checkbox set, RdpGuard monitors system event logs for failed login attempt events.
Enable traffic monitoring - If this checkbox set, RdpGuard also monitors RDP traffic using
one of the methods described below.
As you probably know, Windows 2008 (and 2008 R2) do not write attacker's IP address to Security event log
when RDP connection is made via TLS/SSL.
To work-around this issue, RdpGuard uses an alternate, traffic-based approach to detect failed RDP connections over TLS.
You usually do not need to enable traffic monitoring on Windows Server 2012 and later,
log-based approach usually covers 100% of failed login attempts on these editions, but there are setups that may result
to empty source network address events in the Security event log.
If you observe 4625 events in the Security event log with emtpy source network address, please enable traffic monitoring.
Traffic monitoring methods:
-
Raw Sockets
- may not work on Windows Server 2008 (but works on R2) or with 3-rd party Firewalls and Anti-Viruses.
It may also work slow on heavy loaded servers. Not recommended for high bandwidth setups.
-
WinPcap
- works on all Windows editions, WinPcap/NPcap must be installed.
Works faster than Raw Sockets. Recommended choice.
Monitoring via Raw Sockets
This monitoring method works on Windows Server 2008 R2 only if there are no 3-rd party firewalls
or anti-viruses installed. It works out of the box and doesn't require any additional software.
It may work slow on heavy loaded servers. Not recommended for high bandwidth setups.
Addresses to monitor
When Monitoring via Raw Sockets is enabled, RdpGuard listens on RDP port for an each IP address associated with the machine.
This may affect server performance if there are high number of IP addresses associated with the machine.
In order to avoid performance decrease, you may consider limiting the number of IP addresses available for RDP connection:
- Open the Windows Firewall MMC (wf.msc)
- Select the Inbound Rules section
- Get the properties of the Remote Desktop (TCP-In) rule
- On the Scope tab, choose the option to select specific IP's in the "Local IP Address" section
- Add the IP address that you want to allow RDP connections to connect to
When you done with the firewall configuration, you may update addresses to monitor in RdpGuard.
Monitoring via WinPcap
This monitoring method works on all Windows Server 2008 editions but requires additional software installation.
You need to download and install WinPcap.
It works faster than Raw Sockets and consumes less resources. We recommend this monitoring method.
3. Specify one or multiple RDP ports to monitor (you may skip this step if you are using RDP on a single port)
4. Click Save to save changes and restart RdpGuard service.
