In Brief

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

Reporters with Bloomberg and Cyberscoop first reported Williams’ sentencing. 

Williams was the general manager of Trenchant, a division of the defense contractor L3Harris that sells hacking and surveillance tools — typically known as zero-days — to the U.S. government and a select group of its top allies, known as the Five Eyes, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. 

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

Operation Zero offers millions of dollars for details of security vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram. Operation Zero claims to resell the tools it acquires exclusively to the Russian government and local companies. 

The U.S. Department of Justice alleged that the hacking tools Williams sold 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 that he made $1.3 million in crypto from the sales between 2022 and 2025. 

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