BERLIN — Viettel Cyber Security (VCS), a subsidiary of Viettel Group, achieved a perfect score of 15.5 out of 15.5 at the Pwn2Own Berlin 2025 cybersecurity competition, marking a new milestone for Việt Nam in one of the world’s most prestigious hacking contests.

This was the first time the Vietnamese team participated in the virtualisation and enterprise application categories – areas considered among the most technically challenging, due to their complexity and historically low success rates. VCS successfully exploited vulnerabilities in an AI inference server, a virtualisation platform and a widely used enterprise collaboration system.

The competition also marked the debut of AI-related systems as official targets. Viettel’s ability to breach a leading industrial AI platform in its first attempt was seen as a notable achievement, reflecting the team's growing expertise in next-generation security technologies.

While the Vietnamese team placed second overall – behind a Singaporean team that registered more targets – its successful exploit of Microsoft SharePoint, considered the most difficult challenge of the event, drew significant attention from the global cybersecurity community.

The result represents a strategic shift for VCS, which had previously focused on smart devices – a category in which it claimed top positions at Pwn2Own events in Ireland (2023) and Toronto (2024). This year, the team expanded its efforts to target more complex enterprise and infrastructure systems, in line with Viettel’s long-term vision for cybersecurity.

Organised annually by the Zero Day Initiative, Pwn2Own is a premier platform for white-hat, or so-called ethical hackers and researchers to demonstrate zero-day exploits. Viettel’s strong performance further reinforces Việt Nam’s standing as an emerging force in global cybersecurity research and offensive security. — BIZHUB