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

Peter Williams, the former head of a U.S. defense company, was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for stealing hacking and surveillance tools from his former company and selling them to a Russian company.

Reporters at Bloomberg and Cyberscoop were first to report Williams’ sentencing.

Williams was the general manager of Trenchant, a division of defense contractor L3Harris that sells hacking and surveillance tools, commonly known as zero-days, to the U.S. government and some 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 living in Washington DC, pleaded guilty to selling seven of Trench’s trade secrets to a Russian broker. Prosecutors did not name the company at the time, but the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed Tuesday that the broker was Operation Zero and announced sanctions against the company.

Operation Zero is offering millions of dollars to provide details about security vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps such as Telegram. operation zero It 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 sold by Williams allowed end customers to “potentially access millions of computers and devices around the world.” Williams, who previously worked for Australia’s spy agency and the country’s military, admitted making $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from sales between 2022 and 2025.

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