Pwn2Own Ireland Pays Out $1.26 Million for 98 Zero-Days

· Cybersecurity · Ireland · United States

Pwn2Own Ireland 2026 concluded with researchers collecting $1,262,000 in rewards after exploiting 98 zero-day flaws across phones, printers, smart speakers, smart home hubs, and AI infrastructure and coding tools. Three research teams broke into Google's Pixel 10 on October 8 under contest rules that require every target to be fully patched; Pixel exploits alone accounted for $560,000 in payouts, with one exploit earning Ikotas Labs $300,000. Vendor-participating contests pass disclosed flaws to the affected companies so they can be fixed before attackers find them, making the event both a stress test of shipping products and an early signal of where exploitable weaknesses are concentrating.

Why it matters：Fully patched devices falling to working exploits shows how much unknown risk remains in shipping hardware and AI tooling, and the disclosed bugs feed directly into vendor patch pipelines.

Key points

  • 98 zero-days exploited, with total payouts of $1,262,000
  • Pixel 10 exploits alone earned $560,000, including $300,000 for Ikotas Labs
  • Targets included phones, printers, smart speakers, smart home hubs, and AI infrastructure and coding tools

Sources (original reporting)

More stories from this day