Things are gearing up for Pwn2Own again this year with the mobile space heating up. Pwn2Own is happening in Amsterdam at EUSecWest this year on the 19th and 20th of September. TippingPoint is once again the main sponsor for Pwn2Own along with RIM, AT&T, and HP DVLabs. This year Pwn2Own is dedicated to the mobile attack surface including attacks on mobile browsers, NFC, SMS, and the cellular baseband.
The Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) part of the contest is offering up four prizes with one each going to the first researcher to compromise a device through one of the following vectors:
- Mobile Web Browsers
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- Short Message Service (SMS)
- Cellular Baseband
Each contestant will be allowed to select the device they want to go up against during the pre-registration and the only requirement is that it be a current device and running the latest operating system. They gave some examples including the BlackBerry Bold 9930, Samsung Galaxy SIII, Nokia Lumia 900, Apple iPhone 4S. Successful attacks must require little to no user interaction and must compromise or extract/exfiltrate useful data from the phone. It can also simply cost the owner money by doing things like calling long distance numbers or listening in on phone calls. Each successful compromise will win a BlackBerry PlayBook along with a cash prize with the first in each category winning:
- Mobile Web Browser
- $20,000 USD
- NFC
- $40,000 USD
- SMS
- $40,000 USD
- Cellular Baseband
- $100,000 USD
Check out the full details over at the TippingPoint blog. It should be interesting to see what comes out of the event this year!
