In the United States, 39-year-old Australian citizen Peter Williams, former CEO of Trenchant, the cyber division of L3Harris Technologies, has been sentenced to 7 years and 3 months in prison.
The United States Department of Justice announced the sentence after a hearing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Williams was convicted of stealing and selling trade secrets, specifically sensitive software components, to a Russian intermediary.
According to investigators, over the course of three years, he stole cyberattack tools developed exclusively for use by the US government and its closest allies. He sent the code through encrypted channels to a Russian broker linked to the Russian government and received payments in cryptocurrency totaling up to $4 million.
Prosecutors state that he used the money to buy real estate, luxury watches, jewelry, and to fund lavish travel. In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered the forfeiture of $1.3 million in assets and imposed three years of supervised release upon his release from prison.
Prosecutors explained that the sold tools could have enabled Russia to secretly infiltrate millions of digital devices worldwide.
At the same time as the sentencing, US authorities shut down the operations of the Russian intermediary company that had purchased the technologies.
