The remote host supports the use of SSL ciphers that offer medium strength encryption. Nessus regards medium strength as any encryption that uses key lengths at least 64 bits and less than 112 bits, or else that uses the 3DES encryption suite. Note that it is considerably easier to circumvent medium strength encryption if the attacker is on the same physical network.

The remote version of the Remote Desktop Protocol Server (Terminal Service) is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack. The RDP client makes no effort to validate the identity of the server when setting up encryption. An attacker with the ability to intercept traffic from the RDP server can establish encryption with the client and server without being detected. A MiTM attack of this nature would allow the attacker to obtain any sensitive information transmitted, including authentication credentials. This flaw exists because the RDP server stores a publicly known hard-coded RSA private key. Any attacker in a privileged network location can use the key for this attack.

The server's X.509 certificate cannot be trusted. This situation can occur in three different ways, in which the chain of trust can be broken, as stated below : - First, the top of the certificate chain sent by the server might not be descended from a known public certificate authority. This can occur either when the top of the chain is an unrecognized, self-signed certificate, or when intermediate certificates are missing that would connect the top of the certificate chain to a known public certificate authority. - Second, the certificate chain may contain a certificate that is not valid at the time of the scan. This can occur either when the scan occurs before one of the certificate's 'notBefore' dates, or after one of the certificate's 'notAfter' dates. - Third, the certificate chain may contain a signature that either didn't match the certificate's information or could not be verified. Bad signatures can be fixed by getting the certificate with the bad signature to be re-signed by its issuer. Signatures that could not be verified are the result of the certificate's issuer using a signing algorithm that Nessus either does not support or does not recognize. If the remote host is a public host in production, any break in the chain makes it more difficult for users to verify the authenticity and identity of the web server. This could make it easier to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks against the remote host.

The X.509 certificate chain for this service is not signed by a recognized certificate authority. If the remote host is a public host in production, this nullifies the use of SSL as anyone could establish a man-in-the-middle attack against the remote host. Note that this plugin does not check for certificate chains that end in a certificate that is not self-signed, but is signed by an unrecognized certificate authority.

The remote Terminal Services service is not configured to use strong cryptography. Using weak cryptography with this service may allow an attacker to eavesdrop on the communications more easily and obtain screenshots and/or keystrokes.

The remote Terminal Services is not configured to use Network Level Authentication (NLA) only. NLA uses the Credential Security Support Provider (CredSSP) protocol to perform strong server authentication either through TLS/SSL or Kerberos mechanisms, which protect against man-in-the-middle attacks. In addition to improving authentication, NLA also helps protect the remote computer from malicious users and software by completing user authentication before a full RDP connection is established.

The remote host supports the use of RC4 in one or more cipher suites. The RC4 cipher is flawed in its generation of a pseudo-random stream of bytes so that a wide variety of small biases are introduced into the stream, decreasing its randomness. If plaintext is repeatedly encrypted (e.g., HTTP cookies), and an attacker is able to obtain many (i.e., tens of millions) ciphertexts, the attacker may be able to derive the plaintext.

The remote host supports the use of RC4 in one or more cipher suites. The RC4 cipher is flawed in its generation of a pseudo-random stream of bytes so that a wide variety of small biases are introduced into the stream, decreasing its randomness. If plaintext is repeatedly encrypted (e.g., HTTP cookies), and an attacker is able to obtain many (i.e., tens of millions) ciphertexts, the attacker may be able to derive the plaintext.

The remote service accepts connections encrypted using TLS 1.0. TLS 1.0 has a number of cryptographic design flaws. Modern implementations of TLS 1.0 mitigate these problems, but newer versions of TLS like 1.2 and 1.3 are designed against these flaws and should be used whenever possible. As of March 31, 2020, Endpoints that aren’t enabled for TLS 1.2 and higher will no longer function properly with major web browsers and major vendors. PCI DSS v3.2 requires that TLS 1.0 be disabled entirely by June 30, 2018, except for POS POI terminals (and the SSL/TLS termination points to which they connect) that can be verified as not being susceptible to any known exploits.

The remote service accepts connections encrypted using TLS 1.1. TLS 1.1 lacks support for current and recommended cipher suites. Ciphers that support encryption before MAC computation, and authenticated encryption modes such as GCM cannot be used with TLS 1.1 As of March 31, 2020, Endpoints that are not enabled for TLS 1.2 and higher will no longer function properly with major web browsers and major vendors.

The encryption setting used by the remote Terminal Services service is not FIPS-140 compliant.

The remote host allows SSL/TLS connections with one or more Diffie-Hellman moduli less than or equal to 1024 bits. Through cryptanalysis, a third party may be able to find the shared secret in a short amount of time (depending on modulus size and attacker resources). This may allow an attacker to recover the plaintext or potentially violate the integrity of connections.