The Pwnie Awards is an annual awards ceremony celebrating the achievements (and failures) of security researchers and the security community.
The awards are given out once a year. The annual ceremony takes place during the Blackhat USA 2023 conference in Las Vegas.
Judges
The Pwnie Award nominations are judged by a panel of respected security researchers – the closest to a jury of peers a hacker is likely to ever get – and former pwnie award recipients.
2021 and prior year Judges include:
| Brandon Edwards | Charlie Miller | Chris Valasek | Dave Aitel |
| Justine Bone | Kelly Shortridge | Dave Goldsmith | TomP |
| Mark Dowd | Mudge | Halvar | Katie Moussouris |
| Daniel Gruss | Dhiraj Mishra | Buherator | Joernchen |
awards offered
In 2023, there will be 11 award categories:
- Pwnie for Best Desktop Bug
- Pwnie for Mobile Bug
- Pwnie for Best Cryptographic Attack
- Pwnie for Best Song
- Pwnie for Most Innovative Research
- Pwnie for Most Under-hyped Research
- Pwnie for Privilege Escalation
- Pwnie for Remote Code Execution
- Pwnie for Lamest Vendor Response
- Pwnie for Most Epic Fail
- Pwnie for Epic Achievement
nominations
The Pwnie Awards accepts nominations for bugs disclosed from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.
The top three nominees in each category are announced simultaneously at Summercon in Brooklyn, NY on July 14 and on this website. The panel of judges gather at an undisclosed location (it’s called “cyberspace”) to vote on the winners.
sponsors
The Pwnie Awards thank BlackHat for providing a venue for the awards ceremony, Summercon for continuous support of the awards and nomination process, and the tireless volunteers who make the magic happen. Please inquire below for other sponsorship opportunities, but keep in mind that sponsoring the awards will have no influence on the judges. We will gladly take your money and spend it on things that we shouldn’t, like booze or luxury watches or paying our ChatGPT bill.
contact us
To contact the Pwnie Awards organizers, email [email protected], or DM us on twitter.