Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)

This week Joseph talks to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, a journalist at TechCrunch. Lorenzo has possibly the deepest understanding of one of the wildest cybersecurity stories in years: how an employee of Trenchant, a government malware vendor that is supposed to only sell to the ‘good’ guys, secretly sold a bunch of hacking tools to a Russian company. Those tools, it looks like, then ended up with the Russian government and possibly Chinese criminals too. It’s a really insane story about how powerful hacking tech can fall into the wrong hands. 0:00 - Guest Introduction: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai 03:05 – What Is Trenchant? 04:05 – Secrecy & Evolution of Exploit Industry 05:18 – Modern Spyware Industry Landscape 08:47 – Discovery of Peter Williams 10:44 – Apple Spyware Notifications Context 13:16 – Early Reporting Strategy 14:26 – Indictment & Confirmation 15:47 – What Peter Williams Did 21:55 – Economics of Zero-Day Market 28:31 – Google Discovers “Corona” Exploit Kit 31:49 – Shift to Mass Exploitation in China 34:41 – How Did It Spread? (Speculation) 38:14 – Link Back to Trenchant Leak 40:05 – Security Failure & Industry Implications 44:42 – Ethical Stakes & Real-World Harm 46:53 – Motive & Final Reflections - Inside the story of the US defense contractor who leaked hacking tools to Russia: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/inside-the-story-of-the-us-defense-contractor-who-leaked-hacking-tools-to-russia/ - US military contractor likely built iPhone hacking tools used by Russian spies in Ukraine: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/us-military-contractor-likely-built-iphone-hacking-tools-used-by-russian-spies-in-ukraine/ This is a production of 404 Media, a journalist-owned tech website. Learn more and subscribe at: htttps://404media.co Listen to our weekly podcasts: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-404-media-podcast/id1703615331?ref=404media.co Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0F3oY47l2XgoBMaAmIaw29?ref=404media.co Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5hY2FzdC5jb20vcHVibGljL3Nob3dzL3RoZS00MDQtbWVkaWEtcG9kY2FzdA?ref=404media.co Become a paid subscriber for access to bonus content: https://404media.co/membership