AN Australian national was sentenced to 87 months in a US prison for stealing trade secrets from a defence contractor and selling them to a Russian cyber-exploit broker. Peter Williams, 39, stole at least eight cyber exploits between April 2022 and June 2025 and sold them to a Russian broker that provides cyber tools to the Russian government and other customers, including the broker Operation Zero.
In October 2025, Williams pleaded guilty to stealing the exploits and to entering into multiple written contracts with the broker, and he admitted to receiving payments in cryptocurrency to fund luxury purchases. The court heard that Williams’s actions caused $35 million in losses to the defence contractor and affected the company’s customers, including the US government and allied governments.
Williams was an executive at Trenchant, a division of L3Harris, and was also said to have transferred the stolen exploits to the broker via encrypted means; according to FBI Counterintelligence Division assistant director Roman Rozhavsky, his conduct put national security at risk.