A former executive at the defense contractor L3 Harris on Wednesday pleaded guilty to selling spyware exploits to a Russian broker.
Peter Williams, who formerly led Trenchant, the L3Harris division dealing in spyware and zero days, sold the trade secrets to a Russian cyber-tools broker that “publicly advertises itself as a reseller of cyber exploits to various customers, including the Russian government,” according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release.
Williams pleaded to two counts of theft of trade secrets for peddling the information which officials said he stole over a three-year period from 2022 to 2025. The material sold was national security software that included at least eight “sensitive and protected cyber-exploit components” which were only supposed to be sold to the U.S. government and approved allies, DOJ said.
Each of the charges carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and fines.
Williams was promised millions of dollars in cryptocurrency for selling the secrets, prosecutors said. Officials say he signed multiple contracts with the Russian broker for both the initial sales and “follow-on support.”
“These international cyber brokers are the next wave of international arms dealers and we continue to be vigilant about their activities,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a prepared statement.
Pirro said Williams’s offenses cost L3Harris $35 million in addition to providing foreign cyber actors who are not allies with the U.S. “sophisticated cyber exploits that were likely used against numerous unsuspecting victims.”
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Suzanne Smalley
is a reporter covering privacy, disinformation and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop and Reuters. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington with her husband and three children.
