Former L3Harris Trenchant boss jailed for selling hacking tools to Russian broker | TechCrunch

Peter Williams, a former boss of a U.S. defense contractor, was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for stealing and selling his former company’s hacking and surveillance tools to a Russian company.

Reporters with Bloomberg And Cyberscope first reported Williams’ conviction.

Williams was the chief executive of Trenchant, a division of defense contractor L3Harris that sells hacking and surveillance tools – commonly known as zero-days – to the US government and a select group of its key allies known as the Five Eyes, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Last year, Williams, 39, an Australian citizen living in Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to selling seven Trenchant trade secrets to a Russian broker. Although prosecutors did not name the company at the time, the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed Tuesday that the broker is Operation Zero and announced sanctions against the company.

Operation Zero is offering millions of dollars to detail security issues on Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram. Operation Zero claims to resell the instruments it acquires exclusively to the Russian government and local companies.

The US Department of Justice claimed that the hacking tools Williams sold could have allowed the end customer to “potentially gain access to millions of computers and devices worldwide.” Williams, who previously worked for an Australian spy agency and the country’s military, admitted to making $1.3 million worth of crypto from sales between 2022 and 2025.

Attorneys for L3Harris and Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.