Chinese elite hacking competition uncovers vulnerabilities in Windows 10, Google Chrome, iOS 14, Mozilla Firefox

Chinese hacking competition Tianfu Cup has exposed security glitch in some of the most used software applications such as Apple’s iOS, Chrome web browser, Microsoft Windows 10, Adobe PDF Reader, and Ubuntu.

The Tianfu Cup, one of China’s largest and most prestigious hacking competitions, is held in China once every year where hackers compete against each other to find new vulnerabilities in popular programs and platforms.

The competition was held over the weekend, with security researching winning near 1.2 million dollars by successfully hacking popular software tools.

TFC 2020 has come to the end, all these excellent offensive researchers and their burning 0days makes #TFC 2020 a success! Thank you all for participating and following! pic.twitter.com/MwJLc5M0B4

— TianfuCup (@TianfuCup) November 8, 2020

This year saw the third edition of the competition being held in the city of Chengdu, in central China. Event organisers confirmed that hackers were able to successfully breach the following popular systems:

• Android (Samsung Galaxy S20)
• iOS 14 (Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max)
• Google Chrome
• Safari
• Firefox
• Adobe PDF Reader
• Docker-CE
• Windows 10 2004
• TP-Link
• ASUS Router

This year’s Tianfu Cup saw 15 teams of Chinese hackers participating in several challenges. Contestants had three attempts of five minutes each to hack a certain target with an original exploit. Hackers received monetary rewards for each successful hack, depending on the target they selected and the severity of the hack.

As per the rules and regulations of the competition, all exploits were disclosed to the concerned software providers. Patches for the bugs reported during the weekend will be provided in the coming days and weeks as with every Tianfu Cup.