Trend Micro: Decreasing enterprises’ cybersecurity risk through vulnerability disclosure contest

Trend Micro Incorporated, the proud owner of the Zero Day Initiative™ (ZDI), the world’s largest vendor-agnostic bug bounty programme, announced that more than $1 million in prizes were awarded at this week’s consumer-focused Pwn2Own contest in Toronto. The ZDI event pays the world’s leading freelance security researchers for the responsible discovery and disclosure of vulnerabilities in major software and hardware devices.

During the first day of the event alone, security researchers hacked prolific smartphone devices more than once. This was done by manipulating improper input validation weakness to secure code execution. 

Aside from smartphones, ethical hackers disclosed vulnerabilities across a wide range of devices, including printers, smart speakers and surveillance cameras. 

Zaheer Ebrahim, Solutions Architect for Middle East and Africa at Trend: “Trend ZDI gets cyber weapons off the streets before a breach can even be considered. This is key to elevating security standards for the entire industry and keeping our customers across the world, including those in Africa, safe from malicious actors. We all agree that this proactive approach is critical to staying ahead of cybercriminals.”

The disclosures discovered through the ZDI at Pwn2Own and year-round allow vendors to quickly understand and fix vulnerabilities before cybercriminals exploit them, ultimately benefiting organisations that use the impacted software or hardware. ZDI research has shown that vendors are increasingly neglecting to patch software vulnerabilities that are disclosed to them, which further sets apart the superior risk protection received by Trend customers.

The immediate awareness of these vulnerabilities means that Trend customers and their end users can be protected 70+ days in advance of the rest of the world. More than 1,000 vulnerabilities in software used around the world have been disclosed through the ZDI in 2023 so far.

Decreasing vulnerabilities in the real world has a direct correlation to decreasing an organisations’ attack surface available to threat actors. Security teams continue to be plagued by things that exceed their purview, which can be office hardware and employee’s home office devices such as, smartphones, NAS devices, cameras, printers and routers.