White hat hackers win big at inaugural Pwn2own Automotive event
Participants in the vehicle-based hackathon took home more than $1 million in prizes after finding a series of bugs.
The first Pwn2Own Automotive event kicked off last week and ran for three days, January 23-25.
The event took place as part of the Automotive World conference in Tokyo, after being just one part of the broader Pwn2Own event, which has been running since 2007.
Alarmingly, those who competed in the event encountered many errors. On just the first day, flaws were found in the automotive-grade Linux operating system, the Alpine Halo9 iLX-F509 AV receiver, and the modem that comes with your shiny new Tesla, and that’s just a taste of it.
On the second day, hackers discovered flaws in the ChargePoint Home Flex charging system, the Phoenix Contact CHARX SEC-3100 charge controller, and the JuiceBox 40 smart electric vehicle charging station; again, just the tip of the iceberg.
On the final day, the ChargePoint Home Flex was reassembled, along with the Pioneer DMH-WT7600NEX AV receiver.
Hackers and hacking teams received points for each successful attack, ranked based on the skill involved and the nature of the exploit found. Team Synacktiv emerged as the overall winner, scoring 50 points throughout the event and winning prize money totaling US$450,000.
In total, $1,323,750 was awarded to teams and individual participants, who managed to find 49 previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities.
You can learn more about the event at www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog.
