Clipboard redirection is an RDP feature that synchronizes copied text and other clipboard data between the local computer and the remote session. It makes copy-and-paste work across machines, but it also creates a data path from the remote side into the client. In security terms, that means clipboard traffic is not just convenience data: it is input that must be parsed safely by the remote desktop software.
This matters because any parser exposed through clipboard redirection can become a trust boundary. If a malicious or compromised RDP server sends malformed clipboard content, the client may crash or, in the worst case, suffer memory corruption such as a heap buffer overflow. Defenders reduce risk by disabling clipboard sharing when it is not needed, restricting it through policy, and keeping RDP clients patched. The general rule is simple: treat clipboard data from a remote session as untrusted network input.