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Peter Williams, a former U.S. defense contractor boss, was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in prison for stealing and selling his former company\u2019s hacking and surveillance tools to a Russian firm.<\/p>\n
Reporters with Bloomberg<\/a> and Cyberscoop<\/a> first reported Williams\u2019 sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Williams was the general manager of Trenchant, a division of the defense contractor L3Harris that sells hacking and surveillance tools \u2014 typically known as zero-days<\/a> \u2014 to the U.S. government and a select group of its top allies, known as the Five Eyes, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, Williams, 39, an Australian citizen who resides in Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty to selling seven Trenchant trade secrets<\/a> to a Russian broker. While prosecutors didn\u2019t name the company at the time, the U.S. Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday that the broker is Operation Zero, and announced sanctions against the company<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Operation Zero offers millions of dollars<\/a> for details of security vulnerabilities in Android and iPhone devices, as well as messaging apps like Telegram<\/a>. Operation Zero <\/s>claims<\/a> to resell the tools it acquires exclusively to the Russian government and local companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n