Despite being nominated for four gongs, Heartbleed only won one Pwnie award for being the Best Server-Side Bug.
Neil Mehta, the Google security researcher who is credited with discovering the flaw, was in the audience and came up to receive his award. Security firm Codenomicon is also credited with independently discovering Heartbleed at the same time.
The other big award at the Pwnies is for Epic Ownage. It’s a category won by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. The 2014 award was given to Mt.Gox, the now-defunct Bitcoin exchange.
Mt. Gox collapsed in February, after being hacked and losing approximately $473 million in the process. The award for Epic Ownage wasn’t given to Mt.Gox because it was hacked, but rather because it was able to convince people in the first place to trust it with their money.
