Researchers hacked the Tesla ECU during the Pwn2Own competition

Pwn2Own is an annual hacking competition held at the CanSecWest security conference. The event is similar to a capture-the-flag game for security researchers. If successful, the organizers reward them with the devices and software they exploited and cash prizes. Also, to ensure the safety of the competition, participants have to share their methods in detail.

This year, during the Pwn2Own competition, various products from companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Tesla got hacked by researchers.

How does the Pwn2Own competition work?

The organizers of the Pwn2Own competition collaborate with tech companies to announce the software and devices that will be present at the competition. For example, some companies that joined this year are Windows 11, Tesla, and Ubuntu Linux. Additionally, they could bring a special version of the product for the event.

The participants of the Pwn2Own competition must prepare exploits to take advantage of the security vulnerabilities they find in software, hardware, or firmware. Also, know that they are zero-day attacks. So, the vulnerabilities are not publicly disclosed and aren’t patched. After all, who would need a competition of hacking if anyone would know about the system’s vulnerability and how to exploit it beforehand?

The stars of the show

Abdul Aziz Hariri was the first contestant of the Pwn2Own competition who swiped a $50,000 prize for gaining code execution on a MacOS. To do this, he exploited a fault in Adobe Reader with the help of an API restriction bypass and a command injection bug. His method could give him complete control of a MacOS by using Adobe Reader.

The Synacktiv team targeted a Tesla Model 3’s Electronic Control Unit. They exploited its system using Integer Overflow and Vehicle (VEH) CAN BUS Control. The first one allowed them to overflow the Tesla ECU system with a specific value. By using this trick, they gained control over the CAN BUS. Afterward, they gained access to the car’s functions. Ultimately, they got a Tesla Model 3 and $200,000. Also, last year, the team won $1,035,000 and a Tesla car for discovering 27 zero-day exploits at the Pwn2Own competition.

The security researchers from Theori, Gwangun Jung, and Junoh Lee targeted the VMware Workstation and earned $130,000. By doing this, they gained SYSTEM-level access to the host Windows OS. In addition, they exploited various vulnerabilities by chain-targeting an uninitialized variable bug, a UAF weakness, and a heap-based buffer overflow.

In a nutshell, the Pwn2Own competition facilitates the discovery of zero-day vulnerabilities. Also, through it, companies can learn how to patch the exploits, especially since the researchers need to provide detailed information about their ways. However, we need to wait 90 days until Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative discloses the vulnerabilities used.

If you want to learn more about the contestants or companies in this competition, check out BleepingComputer’s article. Below, you can find the leaderboard.

What are your thoughts? Are you looking forward to seeing the Zero Day exploits used? Let us know in the comments.