Security News > 2022 > May > Pwn2Own hacking schedule released – Windows and Linux are top targets
The rules of Pwn2Own are somewhat strange, given that some entrants may end up not actually competing at all.
The Tesla hackers, plus the browser and virtualisation entrants, will all definitely get a turn, because they're the only competitors in their categories.
Pwn2Own isn't like, say, a time-trial sporting event, where even if the first entrant beats the current world record and seems to have set an invincible time, they still have to wait until the very last competitor finishes to find out if their early time was good enough.
The seventh entrant drawn in the Windows 11 category, for example, can't win simply by being the best, or the fastest, or by some other superlative achievement - they can only win if all the previous six entrants fail completely, and then their hack works.
The last day could be a total washout, because only Teams, Windows and Linux are scheduled for hacking on Friday, and all those prizes may aleady be done and dusted by the end of today!
Do hacking spectaculars of this sort improve the state of cybersecurity by promoting the discipline needed for complete and well-documented research, so that underlying problems are properly exposed, not merely papered over with patches?