A former U.S. defense contractor CEO is now behind bars for one of the most brazen national security breaches in recent memory. Peter Williams, who led hacking tools firm Trenchant, was sentenced for selling highly classified software exploits—including zero-day vulnerabilities—to a Russian broker. TechCrunch broke the story and is now revealing how they uncovered the arrest, what the court documents expose, and the critical questions that remain about how deeply these tools penetrated adversarial networks.
The arrest came quietly, buried in sealed federal court documents that almost no one noticed. But TechCrunch reporters Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai caught wind of something unusual—a defense contractor with deep ties to U.S. intelligence agencies had vanished from public view. What followed was months of investigative work that revealed one of the most damaging insider threats in the cybersecurity world.
Peter Williams wasn't just any contractor. He ran Trenchant, a boutique firm specializing in offensive cyber tools—the kind of software exploits that intelligence agencies pay top dollar for because they can penetrate enemy systems undetected. These weren't garden-variety hacks. According to court documents reviewed by TechCrunch, Williams had access to zero-day vulnerabilities developed under contracts with L3Harris, one of America's largest defense technology providers.
But Williams allegedly took those tools—exploits that could bypass security systems in critical infrastructure, government networks, and corporate targets—and sold them to a Russian broker. The transactions reportedly began in 2024 and continued for over a year before federal investigators caught on. Sources familiar with the case told TechCrunch that the exploits changed hands through encrypted channels and cryptocurrency payments, making attribution difficult until a confidential informant tipped off the FBI.
