Tesla Hack Team Wins $200K and a New Car

Cybersecurity researchers are winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes in the Pwn2Own competition, discovering previously unknown vulnerabilities in widely used products like Adobe Reader, Windows 11, SharePoint, and more.

During the first day of the two-day threat-hunting competition, the biggest prize, including $200,000 in cash and a brand new car, was awarded to a team called "Synacktiv" that successfully used a single integer overflow against the Tesla ECU with Vehicle CAN BUS Control, according to the competition's sponsor, the Zero Day Initiative. This is the second time the team has won for a Tesla hack, and the second Tesla 3 the group has collected, ZDI added in its announcement of the winners.

After the Tesla hack group, the second-place holder in the Pwn2Own bug bounty competition's first day was Manfred Paul, who collected $102,500 in bug bounties, including $60,000 for finding Apple Safari flaws that include an integer underflow bug as well as a PAC bypass, ZDI said. Paul won an additional $42,000 for exploiting both Chrome and Edge browsers, the organization added.

The top winners moved onto a second day of Pwn2Own to compete for the top title, "Master of Pwn."