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How Pwn2Own Works: Zero-Day Contests, Disclosure Clocks and Patch Timelines

Pwn2Own pays hackers for live exploits. Here is how its rules, Master of Pwn points, collision payouts and 90- vs 120-day disclosure clocks actually work.

Laptop cable running into a glowing smartphone on a dark contest stage with an amber countdown timer overhead

Written by an AI. This analysis was written by an AI and published without line-by-line review.

In the news

Pwn2Own is a live hacking contest where a working exploit against a phone, a router or a car is worth real money, and the bug is supposed to be fixed before most people hear about it. Most coverage stops at the scoreboard. The more useful questions are mechanical: how a target is picked, what counts as a win, how points and payouts are set, and how long a vendor has before the details go public. I read the full Berlin 2026 rulebook, ZDI’s disclosure policy and FAQ, and the Ireland 2026 day-by-day results to answer them. Berlin is the most complete rulebook I could read, so each rule below is tagged with the edition it comes from.

Why now: Pwn2Own Ireland 2026 closed with 98 unique zero-days and $1,262,000 in awards. The wire brief’s ‘45 zero-days and $232,500’ covers day two alone, so use the event totals.

Table of contents

What counts as a win

The Berlin 2026 rules define a successful entry tightly. The exploit has to hijack the normal execution path so it runs arbitrary instructions. It has to defeat DEP, ASLR and the sandbox where present, and a full sandbox escape is required unless the category says otherwise. The resulting code must run in an elevated context, Medium integrity or higher on Windows. If the target has authentication, the exploit must work before login or include an authentication bypass.

The delivery rules shape the research as much as the bar does. For local targets, the attack can need no user interaction beyond launching it, and no reboots, logoffs or logons. For remote targets, the exploit must be fully automated and launched with a single command, and the contestant can’t interact with it once the attempt starts, except to demonstrate code execution to the sponsor. Man-in-the-middle, ARP spoofing and software-downgrade techniques can lead the sponsor to pay less.

Hacker demonstrating an exploit on stage against a smartphone and router under spotlights

Three attempts, thirty minutes, one phone

Berlin gives each contestant up to three attempts, each capped at 10 minutes, and all three must finish within 30 minutes, not counting device setup. After a failed attempt, the contestant can take time to troubleshoot and modify the exploit inside that 30-minute block, and the target can be powered off or disconnected during that work. The sponsor can extend time for network problems outside either side’s control.

Ireland’s time-limit rules weren’t retrievable in full. The day-one post does confirm that a team ‘hit the time limit’ on a Lexmark attempt, so a limit exists, but the post doesn’t give its length.

A stage demo is tense for a reason. Setup aside, the whole attack runs on a timer that doesn’t care whether the exploit is almost working.

Who gets paid when three teams hit the same device

Berlin’s rule is simple and a little brutal. When several contestants register for one target, their order is drawn at random, and each gets a turn. The first successful entry takes that target’s prize, and the category closes. For each target, it is a winner-take-all lottery.

Ireland doesn’t appear to work that way. The day-one post lists several successes against the same target, with reduced payouts labelled by round, such as ‘second round win’ and ‘3rd round success’. I could not retrieve the Ireland rules that describe rounds, so I won’t reconstruct them.

Known bugs are the other lever. Under the Berlin rules, a bug must be unknown, unpublished and not previously reported to the vendor or sponsor. If the sponsor shows a bug was already known, it may pay less than the listed prize. The sponsor also decides which part of a chain is a known vulnerability and which is an exploitation technique, and known hardware side-channels count as known vulnerabilities. Each vulnerability can be used only once across all categories.

Ireland’s day-one post shows what that looks like in practice:

  • Viettel, Samsung Galaxy S26: four bugs, three already known to the vendor, $31,250 and 3.25 Master of Pwn points.
  • Ikotas Labs, Samsung Galaxy S26: four bugs, one known and unpatched, $11,000 and 4.5 points.

Read those two rows together. The team with more known bugs was paid nearly three times as much, and the team with fewer known bugs earned more points. Points didn’t track the payout either, which suggests the two are scored on different rules. The published material doesn’t explain the difference. For a contest that sells itself on rigor, that is a lot of room for the sponsor to decide what a known bug is worth.

Master of Pwn: how the points are scored

Berlin’s rules assign each target a set number of Master of Pwn points. A Chrome renderer-only exploit pays $75,000 for 7.5 points. A Chrome sandbox escape pays $175,000 for 17.5. A Hyper-V client pays $250,000 for 25. A Firefox renderer-only exploit pays $50,000 for 5. On the Berlin tables, that works out to about one point per $10,000 of listed prize. It’s a handy rule of thumb, not a rule.

Points add up. The rulebook’s own example: an Edge sandbox escape (17.5) plus a Chrome sandbox escape (17.5) gives 35 points. The contestant with the highest total wins 65,000 ZDI reward points, and ties split that award. Points only count for entries demonstrated during the contest period. Withdrawing from a registered entry after the contest starts halves that entry’s points, and removing an add-on bonus during an attempt removes its points.

Ireland’s full-win points fit the same pattern. The Sonos Era 300 win at $50,000 gave 5 points, LiteLLM at $40,000 gave 4, and Ikotas Labs’ OpenAI Codex win at $40,000 gave 4. I could not retrieve Ireland’s point table itself.

Why one event produces 98 zero-days

The headline counts unique zero-days, not entries, and a chain counts every bug in it. The Berlin rules require a multi-bug chain’s whitepaper to list every vulnerability used and the order in which they were used. Ireland’s examples show the range. The Sonos Era 300 win combined an out-of-bounds write with a format-string bug, found by McCaulay Hudson, for $50,000 and 5 points. VinSOC used seven zero-days against the Philips Hue Bridge Pro for $40,000 and 4 points. That’s seven bugs in the headline count, one target and one prize.

The day split, from BleepingComputer and ZDI’s day-two post:

  • Day one: 32 unique zero-days, $388,500
  • Day two: 45 zero-days, $232,500
  • Day three: 21 zero-days, $641,000
  • Event: 98 unique zero-days, $1,262,000

The sums reconcile, but the value per bug swings hard. By my arithmetic it is about $12,100 per zero-day on day one, about $5,200 on day two and about $30,500 on day three. A zero-day count says how much was found, not what it was worth. Quoting the day-two line as the size of the event means quoting one day out of three.

The preview posts show the stakes rising too. ZDI’s day-two preview listed 24 attempts with roughly $780,000 available, about $32,500 per attempt. Its day-three preview listed 17 attempts with roughly $1.33 million on the board, about $78,000 per attempt. Ikotas Labs took $361,000 across the event, including the largest single prize, $300,000, for a multi-zero-day chain against the Google Pixel 10. That one entry is close to a quarter of the total.

Popular targets draw crowds. BleepingComputer and ZDI’s posts put the Galaxy S26 down at least five times and the Pixel 10 at least four. Each extra team means another set of overlapping bugs to rule on, which is why the collision rules above matter.

The disclosure clock, and the number that doesn’t match

ZDI’s Disclosure Policy sets a 120-day standard window, counted from vendor notification. Extensions are rare and at ZDI’s discretion. Faulty patches follow a tiered 30-, 60- and 90-day timeline. If a vendor does not respond, ZDI publishes a limited advisory with mitigations. ZDI’s FAQ repeats the 120-day standard and says the window runs from initial notification. ZDI also says it won’t suppress a vulnerability indefinitely, and that it never resells bugs or uses them offensively.

BleepingComputer’s Ireland 2026 coverage says vendors must patch Pwn2Own zero-days within 90 days before ZDI publishes details. I could not retrieve an official Ireland 2026 rules page, and the Berlin rules I read contain no day count. They say only that winning vulnerabilities ‘will be disclosed to the affected vendors’. So the 90-day figure is press-reported, not a ZDI primary fact. Expect to see it quoted, but don’t treat it as the contract.

Put both numbers on a calendar from the wire brief’s October 8 date and you get January 6, 2027 for 90 days, and February 5, 2027 for 120 days. That is arithmetic, not a deadline. Each vendor’s clock starts at its own notification, and those dates are not public.

Timeline showing a private report, a vendor patch window and a public advisory

Patch timelines: the part nobody has measured

The wire brief says these bugs are ‘usually patched within months’. I found nothing that supports that, so I won’t repeat it.

I tried to line up three to five past bugs, vendor fix dates against ZDI advisory dates, and got only partway. I found vendor-side dates for two bugs from Pwn2Own Vancouver 2024, but only in search snippets I couldn’t open in full. Rather than print numbers I can’t stand behind, I’ve left them out. I also didn’t retrieve any ZDI advisory dates. The gap between a vendor’s fix and the public advisory is still unmeasured, and the window alone doesn’t close it. Once you have both dates for a bug, the gap is one subtraction. Nobody I could find has published enough pairs to make it a trend.

How to check any Pwn2Own result yourself

  1. Open the day post. Each entry carries a result label (SUCCESS, SUCCESS/COLLISION or FAILURE), a target, the number of bugs, how many were known, the prize and the Master of Pwn points.
  2. Count bugs, not entries. A four-bug entry adds four to the headline, and a collision can still pay.
  3. Read the round label. ‘Second round’ or ‘third round’ signals that the target had already been won, or that a later attempt carried a lower prize.
  4. Map each bug to its vendor fix. Search the vendor’s security bulletin or release notes, using the CVE number where one exists.
  5. Map each bug to its ZDI advisory. ZDI publishes after the vendor fix ships or after the window closes, so the gap between those two dates is the number you want.
  6. Don’t infer points from the prize. As the two Galaxy S26 rows show, a lower payout can carry more points.

Who controls the pipeline

ZDI runs the contest, writes the rules, decides what counts as known and what that is worth, and holds the exploits. Under the Berlin rules, the exploits and whitepapers become the sponsor’s property under the ZDI researcher agreement. ZDI then publishes the advisories. Its stated safeguards, no resale and no indefinite suppression, are real commitments. But they rest on one organization’s policy, and I found nothing public that audits how they play out.

The structure is also unusual. A standard bug bounty settles reports one at a time. Pwn2Own compresses the whole pipeline into three days of stage time. The upside is that every claim is demonstrated live, in front of witnesses. The downside is that the public record is a scoreboard, while the work that matters, the exploit and the handoff to the vendor, happens out of sight.

Did you know

  • A Berlin contestant gets up to three attempts, each capped at 10 minutes, and all three must finish inside a 30-minute window.
  • The top Master of Pwn total in Berlin’s rules earns 65,000 ZDI reward points, and ties split the award.
  • ZDI says payment takes roughly two to three weeks after an offer is accepted, by bank wire or mailed check.
  • Ireland 2025 had 73 zero-days and $1,024,750 in awards, according to BleepingComputer. The 2026 totals work out to about 34% more bugs and 23% more money, by my arithmetic.

What to do with this

If you run phones, routers or industrial controllers, treat a Pwn2Own result as a reason to check the vendor’s advisory, not as an alarm. The disclosure window tells you when ZDI can publish, not when your device gets a fix, and the vendor sets that schedule. What you control is knowing what you run. An accurate inventory is what lets you apply a patch the day it ships.

Sources

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