Tech
DOJ says Trenchant boss sold exploits to Russian broker capable of accessing ‘millions of computers and devices’
The former boss of a U.S. maker of hacking and surveillance tools stole and sold technology that can hack millions of computers and people worldwide, U.S. prosecutors have confirmed for the first time.
In October, Australian national Peter Williams, 39, pleaded guilty to selling eight hacking tools that he stole from his employer Trenchant, a division of the U.S. defense contractor L3Harris, which sells its surveillance-enabling tools to the U.S. government and its closest allies. Williams admitted to making more than $1.3 million in crypto from the sales between 2022 and 2025, per the Justice Department.
In a court document published on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said Williams’ actions “directly harmed” the U.S. intelligence community by selling the hacking tools to a Russian company, which counts the Russian government among its customers.
While it was known that Williams sold Trenchant’s exploits — software that takes advantage of flaws in other software usually to gain access to someone’s computer or device — prosecutors now say that these eight tools could have been used to indiscriminately enable government surveillance, cybercrime, and ransomware attacks across the globe.
This latest disclosure comes ahead of Williams’ anticipated sentencing on February 24 in a Washington, D.C., federal court. In its sentencing memorandum, which prosecutors use to persuade a court into handing down the maximum punishment, the Justice Department said that the exploits sold by Williams would have allowed the Russian broker and its customers to “potentially access millions of computers and devices around the world, including in the United States.”
Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Williams to nine years in prison, with three years of supervised release, a mandatory restitution of $35 million, and a maximum fine of $250,000. Williams is expected to be deported to Australia after serving his sentence, the memorandum said.
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In response to the prosecutors’ memorandum, Williams submitted a letter to the judge explaining his decisions, saying that he regretted his actions.
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“I made choices that directly violated the values I believed in and the trust placed in me by my family, colleagues, and friends,” wrote Williams. “I recognize now that I allowed myself to ignore my obligations and my training, and I failed to seek help or guidance when I knew I was moving in the wrong direction.”
Williams’ lawyer, John P. Rowley, wrote in response to prosecutors that none of the stolen hacking tools were classified, and there was no evidence that Williams knew the tools would end up in the hands of the governments of Russia or another country. His lawyer said that Williams did not intend to harm the U.S. and his native Australia, “although he now recognizes that was a consequence of his actions.”
When reached by TechCrunch, Justice Department spokesperson Pierson Furnish declined to comment. Rowley, Williams’ attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
From scapegoat to sentencing
During mid-2025, several sources with knowledge of the offensive cybersecurity industry told TechCrunch that someone working for Trenchant had stolen sensitive hacking tools and sold them to an adversary of the United States.
A former Trenchant employee came forward, telling TechCrunch that he had been wrongly fired after the company accused him of stealing and leaking details of some of the company’s exploits.
But by October, prosecutors formally accused Williams, who also goes by “Doogie” and was Trenchant’s general manager at the time, of being behind the theft of the company’s hacking tools. The U.S. government charged Williams with selling the exploits to a Russian broker in exchange for crypto.
Prosecutors said that FBI agents were in contact with Williams from late 2024 until the time of his arrest in mid-2025, during which he was overseeing Trenchant’s internal investigation into the theft of the company’s secrets.
Despite the ongoing investigation, Williams continued to sell the company’s secrets and exploits — technically known as zero-days since the software maker affected hadn’t had time to fix them — even when he was aware that the FBI was investigating the theft and sale of Trenchant’s hacking tools.
Williams also oversaw the firing of the Trenchant employee accused of leaking the tools, sources told TechCrunch and prosecutors have since confirmed. The fired employee told TechCrunch that he believed he was a scapegoat for someone else at the company. Weeks after his firing, the employee received a notification from Apple that he had been targeted with government spyware, which has still not been explained.
“[Williams] stood idly by while another employee of the company was essentially blamed for the Defendant’s own conduct,” the prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “He looked on while an internal corporate investigation falsely cast blame on his subordinate.”
A spokesperson for Trenchant did not respond to a request for comment about Williams or its investigation.
On August 6, FBI agents obtained and executed search warrants for Williams’ home, and then confronted Williams with evidence that showed receipts of crypto payments, the alias he used to interact with the Russian broker that purchased the stolen trade secrets, and his contract with the broker.
The Russian broker is likely Operation Zero, which offers up to $20 million for tools to hack into Android devices and iPhones. The company explicitly says it only sells to the Russian government and local organizations.
Operation Zero did not return a request for comment.
Prosecutors called the broker, which it did not name, “one of the world’s most nefarious exploit brokers,” and said that Williams chose it because, “by his own admission, he knew they paid the most.”
Williams’ “desire for more money, a better lifestyle, bigger home and more jewels and trinkets simply could not be satiated, and he chose to risk it all to betray his company, his colleagues, and the United States and its allies to satisfy that desire,” the prosecutors wrote.
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
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Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
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While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
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Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.
Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
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