PWN2OWN 2020 – Researchers Earned $180K By Hacking Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows

Pwn2Own 2020 is a live hacking contest, in which contestants are challenged to exploit widely-used software, Operating system, and mobile devices.

Now it’s organized by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) for ethical hackers and security researchers who have participated from different countries to find and exploit the zero-day vulnerability.

On this first day, Ethical hackers earned $180K by exploiting the vulnerabilities that reside in Operating systems such as Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows.

The Good news is that the Coronavirus outbreak doesn’t stop this world’s leading hacking conference.

PWN2OWN 2020 – Day -1

The Georgia Tech Systems Software & Security Lab targeted Apple Safari to exploit macOS kernel escalation of privilege, they exploited it uses the chain of six bugs.

By exploiting the bug the team earned USD 70,000 and 7 Master of Pwn points.

Next, the famous Team Fluoroacetate targeted Microsoft Windows operating system with a local privilege escalation. They managed to exploit by using UAF(use-after-free) in Windows to escalate privileges.

Fluorescence team earned $40,000 and 4 points towards Master of Pwn.

Manfred Paul of the RedRocket CTF targeted the Ubuntu Desktop with a local privilege escalation vulnerability.

They used improper input validation bug to exploit it and they earned $30,000 and 3 Master of Pwn points.

Again the Team Fluoroacetate found another local escalate privileges bug in Windows. They leveraged UAF in Windows to escalate to SYSTEM.

For the second bug, they earned, $40,000 and 4 Master of Pwn points, the 2019 Master of Pwn winners already in pursuit.

On Day two researchers to attack Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Workstation and Adobe Reader, will catch up with the results.