Pwn2Own Berlin 2026: On the Ground With TrendAI(TM) ZDI's Biggest AI Showdown Yet
Trend Micro (US), Monday, June 1st, 2026
47 zero-days were exploited at Pwn2Own Berlin 2026 for $1.3M in payouts, with AI security emerging as a major focus.
Pwn2Own Berlin 2026, the world's most prestigious hacking competition run by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative, saw 47 unique zero-day vulnerabilities demonstrated across ten target categories with payouts totaling US$1,298,250.
AI products dominated the competition as a newly expanded category, with researchers discovering a consistent "trust boundary problem" where AI tools and agents fail to independently validate inputs from external services they interact with. Classic enterprise vulnerabilities also persisted, with Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware ESXi all falling to well-understood attack classes.
The event highlighted how AI has become both a significant new attack surface and a powerful tool for offensive researchers, accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities in modern software systems.