Tesla to Offer a Model 3 to be "Pwnd"
This year's Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada will have the chance to win a Tesla Model 3.
Tesla is partnering with the company that puts on the annual event (Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI)) and will give away a Model 3 to the security researchers that will crack the vehicle.
“Our work with the security research community is invaluable to us,” said Tesla’s vehicle software chief David Lau. “We look forward to learning about and rewarding great work in Pwn2Own so that we can continue to improve our products and our approach.”
The Model 3 will be the target of hackers at the event along with several other products like Oracle VirtualBox, Microsoft Office 365, Google Chrome and more. In total, the winners will share over $1 million in cash and prizes in this year's contest. In addition to Tesla, the security company is partnering with Microsoft and has VMWare as a sponsor.
Tesla is also running its own bug bounty program since 2014. In 2018, it increased the bounty from $10,000 to $15,000 and announced that as long as research is done in good faith with its bug bounty program, it would not void the warranty of vehicles used for research.