Peter Williams, the former general manager of Trenchant, a division of defense contractor L3Harris that develops surveillance and hacking tools for Western governments, pleaded guilty last week to stealing some of those tools and selling them to a Russian broker.
A court document filed in the case, as well as exclusive reporting by TechCrunch and interviews with Williams’ former colleagues, explained how Williams was able to steal the highly valuable and sensitive exploits from Trenchant.
Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen who was known inside the company as “Doogie,” admitted to prosecutors that he stole and sold eight exploits, or “zero-days,” which are security flaws in software that are unknown to its maker and are extremely valuable to hack into a target’s devices. Williams said some of those exploits, which he stole from his own company, Trenchant, were worth $35 million, but he only received $1.3 million in cryptocurrency from the Russian broker. Williams sold the eight exploits over the course of several years, between 2022 and July 2025.
Thanks to his position and tenu
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