Gone in 120 seconds: Tesla Model 3 child's play for hackers

IN BRIEF A team of hackers from French security shop Synacktiv have won $100,000 and a Tesla Model 3 after subverting the Muskmobile's entertainment system, and from there opening up the car's core management systems.

The prize was awarded at the annual Pwn2Own competition in Vancouver and it wasn't Synacktiv's only win. The team walked away from the competition with over half a million dollars in prize money after a series of cracks found not only in Tesla's armor but in that of established players too.

Ubuntu took a hammering, with three different teams finding critical flaws in the open source operating system. Windows 11 was also shown to have serious flaws and VMWare Workstation was also successfully cracked. Expect updates soon.

In all, over a million dollars was dished out to competitors, and software companies will now get fixes that could save much more than that if these issues got into the wrong hands. It's a win-win for the industry - proper hackers get a payday and the flaws aren't sold on to others.