Inside the story of the US defense contractor who leaked hacking tools to Russia | TechCrunch

"Peter Williams, a former executive at U.S. defense contractor L3Harris, was sentenced on Tuesday to 87 months in prison for leaking his former company's trade secrets in exchange for $1.3 million in crypto between 2022 and 2025. Williams sold the exploits to Operation Zero, which the U.S. government calls 'one of the world's most nefarious exploit brokers.'"

"Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen who resided in Washington, D.C., was the general manager of Trenchant, the division of L3Harris that develops hacking and surveillance tools for the U.S. government and its closest global intelligence partners. Prosecutors say Williams took advantage of having 'full access' to the company's secure networks to download the hacking tools onto a portable hard drive."

"Trenchant is a crew of hackers and bug hunters who dig deep into other popular software made by companies like Google and Apple, identify flaws in those millions of lines of code, then devise techniques to turn those flaws into workable exploits that can be used to reliably hack into those products. These tools are typically called zero-day exploits."

Peter Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen and general manager of L3Harris's Trenchant division, pleaded guilty to espionage and theft of trade secrets. Between 2022 and 2025, Williams exploited his full access to secure networks to download zero-day exploits onto portable storage and sold them to Operation Zero, a Russian exploit broker, under a pseudonym for $1.3 million in cryptocurrency. Trenchant develops hacking and surveillance tools for the U.S. government and allied intelligence partners by identifying software vulnerabilities in products from companies like Google and Apple. The stolen exploits could have enabled unauthorized access to critical systems. Williams's conviction represents one of the most significant leaks of Western-developed hacking tools in recent years.

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