Peter Williams, the previous common supervisor of Trenchant, a division of protection contractor L3Harris that develops surveillance and hacking instruments for Western governments, pleaded responsible final week to stealing a few of these instruments and promoting them to a Russian dealer.
A court docket doc filed within the case, in addition to unique reporting by information.killnetswitch and interviews with Williams’ former colleagues, defined how Williams was in a position to steal the extremely helpful and delicate exploits from Trenchant.
Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen who was recognized inside the corporate as “Doogie,” admitted to prosecutors that he stole and bought eight exploits, or “zero-days,” that are security flaws in software program which might be unknown to its maker and are extraordinarily helpful to hack right into a goal’s units. Williams stated a few of these exploits, which he stole from his personal firm, Trenchant, have been price $35 million, however he solely obtained $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from the Russian dealer. Williams bought the eight exploits over the course of a number of years, between 2022 and July 2025.
Because of his place and tenure at Trenchant, in response to the court docket doc, Williams “maintained ‘super-user’ entry” to the corporate’s “inside, access-controlled, multi-factor authenticated” safe community the place its hacking instruments have been saved and to which solely workers with a “have to know” had entry.
As a “super-user,” Williams may view all of the exercise, logs, and information related to Trenchant’s safe community, together with its exploits, the court docket doc notes. Williams’ firm community entry gave him “full entry” to Trenchant’s proprietary data and commerce secrets and techniques.
Abusing this wide-ranging entry, Williams used a transportable exterior arduous drive to switch the exploits out of the safe networks in Trenchant’s workplaces in Sydney, Australia, and Washington, D.C., after which onto a private system. At that time, Williams despatched the stolen instruments through encrypted channels to the Russian dealer, per the court docket doc.
A former Trenchant worker with information of the corporate’s inside IT programs instructed information.killnetswitch that Williams “was within the very excessive echelon of belief” inside the firm as a part of the senior management crew. Williams had labored on the firm for years, together with previous to L3Harris’ acquisition of Azimuth and Linchpin Labs, two sister startups that merged into Trenchant.
“He was, in my view, perceived to be past reproach,” stated the previous worker, who requested to stay nameless as they weren’t licensed to talk about their work at Trenchant.
“Nobody had any supervision over him in any respect. He was form of allowed to do issues the best way he needed to,” they stated.
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One other former worker, who additionally requested to not be named, stated that “the overall consciousness is that whoever is the [general manager] would have unfettered entry to all the pieces.”
Earlier than the acquisition, Williams labored at Linchpin Labs, and earlier than then at Australian Alerts Directorate, the nation’s intelligence company tasked with digital and digital eavesdropping, in response to the cybersecurity podcast Dangerous Enterprise.
Sara Banda, a spokesperson for L3Harris, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
“Grave harm”
In October 2024, Trenchant “was alerted” that considered one of its merchandise had leaked and was within the possession of “an unauthorized software program dealer,” per the court docket doc. Williams was put answerable for the investigation into the leak, which dominated out a hack of the corporate’s community however discovered {that a} former worker “had improperly accessed the web from an air-gapped system,” in response to the court docket doc.
As information.killnetswitch beforehand and solely reported, Williams fired a Trenchant developer in February 2025 after accusing him of being double employed. The fired worker later realized from a few of his former colleagues that Williams accused him of stealing Chrome zero-days, which he had no entry to since he labored on creating exploits for iPhones and iPads. By March, Apple notified the previous worker that his iPhone had been focused by “mercenary spyware and adware assault.”
In an interview with information.killnetswitch, the previous Trenchant developer stated he believed Williams framed him to cowl up his personal actions. It’s unclear if the previous developer is identical worker talked about within the court docket doc.
In July, the FBI interviewed Williams, who instructed the brokers that “the most definitely approach” to steal merchandise from the safe community could be for somebody with entry to that community to obtain the merchandise to an “air‑gapped system … like a cellular phone or exterior drive.” (An air-gapped system is a pc or server that has no entry to the web.)
Because it turned out, that’s precisely what Williams confessed to the FBI in August after being confronted with proof of his crimes. Williams instructed the FBI that he acknowledged his code being utilized by a South Korean dealer after he bought it to the Russian dealer; although, it stays unclear how Trenchant’s code ended up with the South Korean dealer to start with.
Williams used the alias “John Taylor,” a international e mail supplier, and unspecified encrypted apps when interacting with the Russian dealer, possible Operation Zero. It is a Russia-based dealer that provides as much as $20 million for instruments to hack Android telephones and iPhones, which it says it sells to “Russian non-public and authorities organizations solely.”
Wired was first to report that Williams possible bought the stolen instruments to Operation Zero, on condition that the court docket doc mentions a September 2023 put up on social media asserting a rise within the unnamed dealer’s “bounty payouts from $200,000 to $20,000,000,” which matches an Operation Zero put up on X on the time.
Operation Zero didn’t reply to information.killnetswitch’s request for remark.
Williams bought the primary exploit for $240,000, with the promise of further funds after confirming the instrument’s efficiency, and for subsequent technical help to maintain the instrument up to date. After this preliminary sale, Williams bought one other seven exploits, agreeing to a complete cost of $4 million, though he ended up solely receiving $1.3 million, in response to the court docket doc.
Williams’ case has rocked the offensive cybersecurity neighborhood, the place his rumored arrest had been a subject of dialog for weeks, in response to a number of individuals who work within the trade.
A few of these trade insiders see Williams’ actions as inflicting grave harm.
“It’s a betrayal to the Western nationwide security equipment, and it’s a betrayal in direction of the worst form of menace actor that now we have proper now, which is Russia,” the previous Trenchant worker with information of the corporate’s IT programs instructed information.killnetswitch.
“As a result of these secrets and techniques have been given to an adversary that completely goes to undermine our capabilities and goes to doubtlessly even use them in opposition to different targets.”
