How to Check for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Services

Last updated at Wed, 27 Sep 2017 20:52:19 GMT

There are many organizations concerned with the critical Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-020 Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) vulnerability. Here is a quick way to check if you have Remote Desktop Protocol running on your system or network. I used NMAP to check my home network.

In the highlighted text below you can see that NMAP can check for the RDP service running. If you can't patch, this is important because attackers won't be able to exploit MS12-020 with the service closed. It's just basic information security hygiene to disable services that you don't need.

If you must run RDP, you'll have to patch this soon. To verify patches actually worked, you'll need a vulnerability scanner. You can download Nexpose Community Edition for free here:  Free Vulnerability Scanner Download | Rapid7

It is important to note that RDP can run on any port, but TCP Port 3389 is the default.

To check one system:

mjc@msfdev:~$ nmap 192.168.1.105 -p 3389  
  
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-03-13 16:59 CDT  
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.105  
Host is up (0.00035s latency).  
PORT     STATE SERVICE  
3389/tcp open  ms-term-serv  
  
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.10 seconds  
mjc@msfdev:~$  

To check a network range:

mjc@msfdev:~$ nmap 192.168.1.0/24 -p 3389                                                  
Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-03-13 17:07 CDT    
Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.1  
Host is up (0.0065s latency).  
PORT     STATE  SERVICE  
3389/tcp closed ms-term-serv  
  
<SNIP>  
  
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (10 hosts up) scanned in 10.75 seconds  
mjc@msfdev:~$