Chinese hackers break into Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Safari in competition

Tianfu Cup brings together China’s best hackers, who excelled in overseas hacking competitions like Pwn2Own

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Why you can trust SCMP

360Vulcan, a security team under Qihoo 360, won first prize at Tianfu Cup 2019. (Picture: Tianfu Cup)

Karen Chiu

Published: 10:00am, 19 Nov 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Hackers from China are some of the best in the world. But now that they’ve been discouraged by their government from participating in foreign hacking competitions, teams are instead converging on Tianfu Cup -- the country’s most elite competitive cybersecurity event.

Over the weekend, teams from Qihoo 360 and others hacked into some of the world’s most popular Wi-Fi routers, web browsers and other software.

Qihoo 360, China’s biggest cybersecurity firm, wants to become China’s cyberwarfare defender

The organizers of Tianfu Cup say the event is designed to be a Chinese version of Pwn2Own -- the big global hacking challenge that brings together security researchers from all over the world twice a year. Organizers include Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Qihoo 360 and other Chinese tech companies.

Just like Pwn2Own, the rules are simple. Researchers pick from targets preselected by the organizers. On contest day, participants use the exploits they’ve prepared to attack any vulnerabilities they discover. If they succeed in gaining control of their target, they win.

Competitions like this play an important role in improving cybersecurity. White hat hackers -- people who work with companies to patch security loopholes -- participate to find and expose bugs before they’re discovered by malicious actors.