The 2014 Pwn2Own competition takes place today and tomorrow at the CanSecWest 2014 conference in Vancouver. The targets to be compromised are the traditional browsers running on fully patched Windows 8.1 x64 and Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
In addition to Chrome, IE11, and Firefox on Windows 8.1 and Safari on OS X, there are separate prizes for vulnerabilities in the category of plugins. Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, and Oracle Java on the Windows 8.1 x64 system could net a $30k-$75k prize. This year’s new addition includes bypassing Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) for $150k. EMET has been getting improvements and is often recommended when there is a vulnerability in the wild. EMET is supposed to make vulnerabilities harder to trigger, hence why an EMET bypass earns more money. Pwn2Own says it will be difficult and may not have any successful contestants, but they’re excited to provide the challenge.
Browsers:
- Google Chrome on Windows 8.1 x64: $100,000
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 x64: $100,000
- Mozilla Firefox on Windows 8.1 x64: $50,000
- Apple Safari on OS X Mavericks: $65,000
Plug-ins:
- Adobe Reader running in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 x64: $75,000
- Adobe Flash running in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 x64: $75,000
- Oracle Java running in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 x64 (requires click-through bypass): $30,000
“Exploit Unicorn” Grand Prize:
SYSTEM-level code execution on Windows 8.1 x64 on Internet Explorer 11 x64 with EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit) bypass: $150,000*
For more details, you can see the complete Rules and Unicorns page for Pwn2Own 2014.
To kick off Pwn2Own 2014, the sponsors (ZDI and Google) are participating in Pwn4Fun. This will have their researchers trying to achieve the same thing as Pwn2Own but with the prize money going to charity, the Canadian Red Cross.
Stay tuned for updates on which teams or individuals are able to crack with browsers, plugins, or bypass EMET.
Day 1 Results
Sponsors Only Pwn4Fun, charity benefit
Apple Safari falls to Google, earning $32,500 for Red Cross Canada.
Internet Explorer falls to the ZDI team (Jasiel Spelman, Matt Molinyawe, Abdul-Aziz Hariri), earning another $50,000 for Red Cross Canada.
Entrants for Pwn2Own
Adobe Reader falls to VUPEN, earning them $75,000.
Internet Explorer falls to VUPEN, earning them $100,000.
Mozilla Firefox falls to Mariusz Mlynski, earning them $50,000.
Adobe Flash Player falls to VUPEN, earning them $75,000.
Mozilla Firefox falls to VUPEN, earning them $50,000.
Mozilla Firefox falls to Jüri Aedla, earning them $50,000.
Day 2 Results
Apple Safari falls to Liang Chen of Keen Team, earning them $65,000.
Microsoft Internet Explorer withstood the attempt by Jung Hoon Lee of ASRT.
Mozilla Firefox falls to George Hotz, earning them $50,000.
Internet Explorer falls to Sebastian Apelt and Andreas Schmidt, earning them $100,000.
Google Chrome falls to VUPEN, earning them $100,000.
Google Chrome falls to an anonymous research via a proxy, earning them $100,000.
Adobe Flash Player falls to Zeguang Zhao of team509 and Liang Chen of Keen Team, earning them $75,000.