A veteran cybersecurity executive who prosecutors said 'betrayed' the United States will spend at least the next seven years behind bars, after pleading guilty to stealing and selling hacking and surveillance tools to a Russian firm. Peter Williams, a former executive at U.S. defense contractor L3Harris, was sentenced on Tuesday to 87 months in prison for leaking his former company's trade secrets in exchange for $1.3 million in crypto between 2022 and 2025. Williams sold the exploits to Operation Zero, which the U.S. government calls 'one of the world's most nefarious exploit brokers.' The successful conviction of Williams follows one of the most high-profile leaks of sensitive Western-made hacking tools in recent years. Even now that the case is over, there are still unanswered questions. Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen who resided in Washington, D.C., was the general manager of Trenchant, the division of L3Harris that develops hacking and surveillance tools for the...
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