Peter Williams, a former U.S. defense contractor executive, was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in prison. He was convicted of stealing and selling his former company’s hacking and surveillance tools to a Russian firm.
Reporters with Bloomberg and Cyberscoop first reported the sentencing. Williams served as the general manager of Trenchant, a division of the defense contractor L3Harris. This division sells advanced hacking and surveillance tools, often called zero-days, to the U.S. government and its closest allies, known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Last year, Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen living in Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to selling seven Trenchant trade secrets to a Russian broker. While prosecutors initially did not name the company, the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday that the broker is Operation Zero and announced sanctions against it.
Operation Zero offers millions of dollars for details of security vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram. The company 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 admitted to making $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from the sales between 2022 and 2025. He previously worked for an Australian spy agency and the country’s military.
L3Harris and Williams’ lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.