Peter Williams, the former head of a US 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.
Journalists with Bloomberg and Cyberscoop first reported Williams’ conviction.
Williams was the managing director 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 top allies known as the Five Eyes, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK.
Last year, Williams, 39, an Australian citizen living in Washington, pleaded guilty to selling seven Trenchant trade secrets to a Russian broker. Although prosecutors did not name the company at the time, the US Treasury confirmed on Tuesday that the broker is Operation Zero and announced sanctions against the company.
Operation Zero is offering millions of dollars to detail security vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram. Zero Mode claims to resell the tools it acquires exclusively to the Russian government and local companies.
The US Department of Justice alleged that the hacking tools sold by Williams could have allowed the end customer to “potentially access millions of computers and devices around the world”. Williams, who previously worked for an Australian spy agency and the country’s military, admitted making $1.3 million in crypto from sales between 2022 and 2025.
Attorneys for L3Harris and Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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