Former L3 boss Harris Trenchant has been jailed for selling hacking tools to a Russian middleman

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.

Bloomberg and Cyberscope reporters first reported Williams’ sentencing.

Williams was managing director of Trenchant, a division of defense contractor L3Harris that sells hacking and surveillance tools — commonly known as Zero-day — to the US government and a select group of its top allies, known as Five Eyes, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Last year, Williams, 39, an Australian citizen residing in Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to selling seven Trenchant trade secrets to a Russian intermediary. While prosecutors did not name the company at the time, the US Treasury Department on Tuesday confirmed that the broker was Operation Zero, and announced sanctions against the company.

Operation Zero is offering millions of dollars to detail vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram. Zero operation It claims to resell the tools it acquires exclusively to the Russian government and local companies.

The US Department of Justice claimed that the hacking tools sold by Williams could have allowed the end agent “potentially access millions of computers and devices around the world.” Williams, who previously worked for an Australian spy agency and the Australian military, admitted he made $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from sales between 2022 and 2025.

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