Pwn2Own Ireland 2026: 98 zero-days; Galaxy S26, Pixel 10 hacked
In Cork, 98 zero-days and $1.26 million in prizes across phones, printers, smart home devices and AI tools. What to do while waiting for patches.
Pwn2Own Ireland 2026, the hacking contest run by Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), wrapped up in Cork on 8 October after three days. The result: 98 zero-day vulnerabilities demonstrated and $1,262,000 in prizes. The targets that fell include the Samsung Galaxy S26 and Google Pixel 10 smartphones, printers, smart home devices, AI infrastructure components and AI coding tools.
These are not attacks in progress: the vulnerabilities are reported to the vendors and the technical details are not public yet. For security teams, though, the contest is an early list of the updates that will arrive over the coming months.
What happened
29 research teams took part across seven categories: smartphones (Galaxy S26 and Pixel 10), messaging apps, smart home devices, printers, AI infrastructure, AI coding apps and a new category for wellness and health devices.
According to BleepingComputer, the contest went as follows:
- day one: 32 zero-days and $388,500 in prizes (Infosecurity Magazine reports over $368,000);
- day two: 45 unique zero-days and $232,500;
- day three: 21 zero-days and $641,000, the highest total thanks to the Pixel 10 attacks.
The winner was Ikotas Labs, with 42.5 “Master of Pwn” points and $361,000, after hacking the Galaxy S26, OpenAI Codex, Oracle Autonomous AI Database and Pixel 10. Xint came second ($240,000, 27.5 points) and Team ZyGoat third ($125,000, 27.5 points). At the 2025 edition, 73 zero-days were demonstrated for $1,024,750.
Targets and techniques demonstrated
Smartphones. The Galaxy S26 was hacked on all three days: three times on day one, by Interrupt Labs, Ikotas Labs and Nguyen Thanh Dat of Viettel Cyber Security, although some of the bugs used were already known to Samsung; three more times on day two, by PetoWorks, Kyeongmin Kim of KAIST Hacking Lab and the team of Dimitrios Valsamaras, Ken Gannon and Tenia Valsamara of CENSUS Labs; and again on day three. The Pixel 10 fell three times, for more than $560,000 in total, according to SecurityWeek:
- Ikotas Labs earned the full $300,000 award by chaining multiple vulnerabilities to hack the phone remotely;
- Tim Becker and Yves Bieri received $150,000: their exploit also used a previously known flaw;
- Dimitrios Valsamaras and Ken Gannon received $112,500 for a chain combining a zero-day with a previously known vulnerability.
Nobody registered an attempt against the iPhone 17 or WhatsApp, both with a maximum award of $300,000.
AI and data. According to Infosecurity Magazine, OpenAI Codex was hacked with a single argument injection bug, while on LiteLLM a Xint researcher combined improper input validation and code injection to get a reverse shell. Oracle Autonomous AI Database was breached with a chain of five zero-days (VinSOC) on day one and a chain of seven (Ikotas Labs) on day two. Attacks on the Nvidia Dynamo inference framework and the Chroma vector database were also rewarded.
Smart home and office. The Sonos Era 300 smart speaker was hacked by combining an out-of-bounds write and a format string bug; the Philips Hue Bridge Pro with a chain of seven zero-days; the Home Assistant Green hub by several teams. Among printers, the Lexmark CX532adwe fell to a single use-after-free; attacks on Brother printers and the Canon imageFORCE 1643F were also rewarded.
Health. In the new category, the Garmin Index BPM blood pressure monitor was hacked with an out-of-bounds read and an out-of-bounds write.
The rules: up-to-date devices and 90 days
Pwn2Own rules require targets to run the latest firmware and software and contestants to demonstrate arbitrary code execution. In other words, at the time of the contest, being up to date was not enough to protect these products.
After the contest, vendors receive the full details and have 90 days to fix the flaws; then ZDI publishes the technical information. The sources report no exploitation in real attacks and no indicators of compromise: there is no attack chain to map to MITRE ATT&CK.
Impact on European and Italian companies
Many of the affected products are common in offices: multifunction printers, company phones, lighting systems and speakers in meeting rooms. Others have recently entered development teams, such as AI model gateways, vector databases and coding assistants. For healthcare and for companies offering wellness programmes to employees, the new health device category is a signal not to ignore.
For NIS2 entities, vulnerability handling and supply chain security are part of the risk management measures required by the directive: knowing which of these products are in use is the first step.
What to do now
- Take inventory: check whether your company uses Galaxy S26, Pixel 10, the Lexmark, Brother or Canon printer models mentioned, Sonos Era 300, Philips Hue Bridge Pro, Home Assistant Green, Garmin Index BPM, or LiteLLM, Nvidia Dynamo, Chroma, OpenAI Codex and Oracle Autonomous AI Database.
- Follow vendor bulletins over the next three months and prepare a fast track for installing updates, including those for company phones through centralised mobile device management.
- Separate printers and smart home devices from the server and workstation network, and do not expose their management interfaces to the internet.
- Do not expose AI gateways, inference frameworks and vector databases without authentication, and give coding assistants only the permissions they strictly need.
- When CVEs and advisories are published, prioritise exposed and critical systems.
How ARXDOME helps
ARX Watch finds devices without a probe on the network, such as printers and other undeclared equipment, and alerts you when a new one appears: it is the starting point for the inventory. Once the vulnerabilities have a CVE, ARX Shield will show the open ones by machine and by package, with those already exploited highlighted, while ARX Expose points out internet-facing services with known vulnerabilities.
Last updated:
