Apple Inc. today filed a lawsuit against Israeli firm NSO Group Technologies Ltd. over the NSO’s use of its Pegasus spyware.

NSO is infamous when it comes to spyware. The company is legitimate and its services, including Pegasus, are deployed by various governments to spy on people. Those people have in the past included journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women, and that’s just the list of people targeted by Saudi Arabia using NSO’s software earlier this year.

Pegasus has been described as military-grade software and “the most potent piece of spyware ever developed.” It works, including against Apple devices, and this is why Apple is taking legal action.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California San Jose Division, call NSO “notorious hackers” and “amoral 21st-century mercenaries.” The colorful descriptions are in the first line of the introduction of the lawsuit.

Apple claims that NSO harms Apple users for their own commercial gains. Point three of the lawsuit notes that the U.S. government has imposed sanctions against the company. That refers to the U.S. Commerce Department decreeing earlier this month that U.S. companies are banned from buying, exporting or transferring any cybersecurity tools developed by NSO unless they receive a special license to do so.

The Apple lawsuit is aiming to prevent NSO from targeting Apple users. In addition, the lawsuit seeks to prevent NSO from using any Apple product or service.

Some reports, such as Voice of America, claim that the lawsuit, if successful, would be a “massive blow to the company that sells governments the ability to hack iPhones and Android phones in order to gain full access.” Except that Israel is not Northern California and a U.S. lawsuit makes absolutely no difference to a company founded and based in Israel. The lawsuit, at most, might restrict the company’s operations in the U.S., but it won’t mean anything other than that.

Apple’s interest in NSO and its lawsuit, goes back to NSO being one of the few companies to compromise Apple devices successfully. After the Forcedentry flaw in iOS was revealed in August, Apple updated its software to block the exploit in September. It’s possible NSO has found a new exploit in iOS to take advantage of in the meantime.

Whether NSO will even bother to counter the lawsuit is also a consideration. In previous cases, such as Meta Inc’.s lawsuit, NSO has claimed that it has sovereign immunity because it works hand-in-hand with foreign government intelligence agencies.

Image: NSO Group