On day one of the prestigious Pwn2Own Berlin 2025 hackathon, elite security researchers successfully exploited three new zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows 11.
These exploits allowed hackers to escalate privileges to system level, potentially enabling full control over affected machines.
The hackers were rewarded a total of $75,000 for their findings, demonstrating the high value of uncovering such critical security flaws before malicious actors can exploit them.
The vulnerabilities included a use-after-free combined with integer overflow, an out-of-bounds memory write, and a type confusion bug.
Pwn2Own is a twice-yearly event organized by the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative, where top ethical hackers compete to find security holes in widely used software and devices.
Microsoft confirmed these attacks, highlighting the ongoing challenges of securing Windows 11 against advanced threats.
