TrendAI™ Zero Day Initiative™ awards over $1.2 million at Pwn2Own

Ethical hackers discovered 98 unique zero-day vulnerabilities at the three-day event, advancing the techniques defenders use to find and fix flaws at AI speed

CORK, Ireland, Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- TrendAI™, the global AI security leader from Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), today celebrated the efforts of the global security research community at Pwn2Own Ireland by awarding a total of $1,262,000 in prizes. Contestants discovered and disclosed 98 unique zero-day vulnerabilities across categories including: mobile phones; smart home devices; wellness; printers; messaging; AI infrastructure; and AI coding agents.

Dustin Childs, Head of Threat Awareness at TrendAI's Zero Day Initiative:  "The vulnerabilities discovered at Pwn2Own are sent to vendors so they can patch them quickly. Having visibility into these vulnerabilities also helps protect TrendAI customers via virtual patching. The lasting value of an event like this is what defenders learn. Every exploit chain demonstrated on stage teaches us something new about how modern systems break, and those lessons go directly into how we train our own research capability to discover, validate and remediate the next one faster. As AI tools and infrastructure continue to become central to business functions, staying ahead of vulnerabilities will be as critical as ever."

The devices on stage at Pwn2Own are deliberately familiar—phones, printers, smart home hubs, wearables—and that familiarity is the point. Watching a researcher chain several flaws together to take over a consumer phone makes visible a process that usually happens out of sight. It is the same process, and often the same class of flaw, that applies to the enterprise-grade systems behind global ecommerce, banking, critical infrastructure and healthcare.

The disclosures made through TrendAI™ ZDI at Pwn2Own and year-round allow vendors to quickly understand and fix vulnerabilities before cybercriminals exploit them, ultimately benefiting organizations and end users of the impacted software or hardware. TrendAI™ research has shown that vendors are increasingly neglecting to patch software vulnerabilities that are disclosed to them. Through the TrendAI™ ZDI coordinated disclosure process, TrendAI Vision One™ customers are protected an average of 115 days ahead of the rest of the industry.

Caroline Kiel, CEO, PingUs: "Watching live zero-day exploits demonstrated on stage was exciting. It was encouraging to see the vendors be onsite to encourage the researcher community to poke holes in their products. Seeing how Pwn2Own turns fresh vulnerability research into immediate protection proves how deeply committed TrendAI is to securing products across the entire ecosystem."

Highlights from the event included:

• Ikotas Labs, Inc. earned the title, Master of Pwn and $300,000, after it chained multiple issues together to successfully exploit the Google Pixel 10 at the very end of the three-day competition. Ikotas Labs, Inc. is the first-ever Japanese team to claim the Master of Pwn title.
• Xint, which placed second in the competition, earned $150,000 by successfully demonstrating a remote exploit of the Google Pixel 10 through a single bug collision.
• Interrupt Labs earned $5,000 after it successfully took over the Lexmark CX532adwe printer and played DOOM on its screen.

The next Pwn2Own competition is expected in early 2027. For more details, please visit: https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog 

About TrendAI™
TrendAI™, the global AI security leader and enterprise business unit of Trend Micro, empowers organizations with full AI visibility and consolidated security that inspires confidence, drives innovation, and eliminates risk. Trusted by the largest enterprises and governments across 185 countries, TrendAI™ secures the entire organization, from identities to infrastructure to data. Global Fortune 500 companies rely on TrendAI™ to cut risk and stop threats up to 3 months earlier, powered by world-leading threat and attack intelligence.

Through deep ecosystem partnerships with market leaders like NVIDIA, Anthropic, AWS, Google, and Microsoft, TrendAI™ empowers your organization to securely drive forward at the speed of AI. AI Fearlessly. Learn more at trendaisecurity.com.

SOURCE TrendAI