There is a prize for hacking into Tesla’s Model 3 sedan and finding vulnerabilities. The reward is the car itself.
At the annual Pwn2Own hackathon at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada, security researchers finding bugs usually take home the laptops they exploit, but this year, they can take home a Tesla.
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Tesla announced a partnership with Trend Micro to offer up a Model 3 to be ‘pwnd’. In addition to Tesla, there are over $1 million in cash and prizes to be won at this year’s Pwn2Own contest.
Trend Micro Inc.’s spring competition, Pwn2Own Vancouver, invites security researchers to expose flaws in web browsers and corporate software. For the first time this year, the competition has added an automotive category, featuring Tesla’s latest car.
Tesla, which can ship updates to customers via over-the-air software upgrades, launched a ‘bug bounty’ program in 2014 to reward researchers who uncover and report flaws.
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‘We develop our cars with the highest standards of safety in every respect, and our work with the security research community is invaluable to us,’ David Lau, vice president of vehicle software at Tesla, said Monday in a statement.
As more vehicles are connected to the internet, leaving them vulnerable to hacking, discovering flaws and setting them right is imperative.