This year, the ever so popular Pwn2Own event has included $1,000,000 for hackers to grab. Among these pieces of software being targeted are Ubuntu Linux, Apple Safari, the Adobe Reader and Microsoft Edge. There are 11 teams this year in the competition with 30 threats taking part. The event began on the 15th of this month and it is under the sponsorship of the Trend Micro.
On the starting day of this competition, some of the major hacks are performed with the winners taking away a huge total of $233,000. This has ushered in the heightened hacking with some of the major pieces of software put to the test. This is the 10th iteration of this event and a lot has happened including the inclusion of Linux for very first time. The competition has included Ubuntu Linux 16.10 and many other pieces of software.
The Qihoo 360, firm which is famous for their suite of security features, has focused on hacking Adobe Reader. It has employed jpeg2000 heap overflow, an RCE, and also a Windows kernel info leak. They are able to hack into this program and has earned a total of $50,000. Although this seems easy, it is not something anyone could pull off without breaking a sweat.
Niklas Baumstark and Samuel Groß then carried out their hack on Apple Safari app. They have focused on using an escalation to root on MacOS. They also have succeeded in their hack after they employed a user-after-free (UAF) combined with few bugs to hack into the Safari browser. For their hard work and efforts, they got a cool $28,000. It is a very impressive hack given that it was just done by two guys who just made up the team.
Team Ether from Tencent Security focused their efforts on hacking the new Microsoft Edge browser.