A data-breach-investigations report issued by Verizon earlier this year found 71 percent of all hacking attacks on business take place using remote access or desktop service.

"Remote access and desktop services, in combination with the exploitation of default and/or stolen credentials, is a huge problem in the retail and hospitality industries," the Verizon report states. "Opportunistic attacks are carried out across many victims who often share the same support and/or software vendor."

According to researchers, as soon as an intruder discovers a particular vendor's authentication method and schema (be it for TCP port 3389 for RDP; or TCP port 5631 and UDP port 5632 for pcAnywhere), he will be able to exploit it across a multitude of that vendor's partners and customers.

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