Hackers from around the world met last week in Vancouver, Canada, for the three-day Pwn2Own competition, where they tried to break into programs such as Microsoft Teams, browsers developed by major solution providers. computers and programs that manage computers installed in cars. It was already the 15th edition of this event. This proved once again that there are no fully secure IT solutions.
The competition took place during the Zero Day Initiative conference organized by Trend Micro. The main prize was a record amount of PLN 600,000. USD and was reserved for a hacker who would break into a Tesla car. The first contest of this type (the creator of which was Dragos Rui) took place in 2007, and then hackers tried to break into MacBook Pro computers.
Currently, events of this type take place several times a year and are an excellent test bed for people dealing with the security of computer systems, and the competition always attracts the attention of hackers and companies who find out if their solutions are really resistant to hacking. This year’s competition was hybrid – participants could participate in person or remotely.
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The name of the contest comes from a combination of two words. The slang expressions “pwn” (which means defeat, in this case to hack into a computer system) and “clean” (which refers to the fact that a specific hacker has broken the hack). The number 2 (“he”) connects the two expressions. From the first day of the competition, hackers managed to break into products such as Microsoft Teams, Firefox and Safari.
The event has grown a lot over the past 15 years. At first, these were small events that mainly dealt with browser security. In the first competitions of this type, the winners received prizes of several thousand dollars, which have increased over time, so that now the overall prize pool is
it closed with $2 million.
All of the vulnerabilities that were discovered during the Pwn2Own competition in May can be found here.
