Israeli’s infamous hacker-for-hire company, NSO Group has continuously found itself in hot waters. The recent scandal involving the company is an alleged hacking of 11 US State Department employees who were all said to be located in Uganda as well as other foreign service officers – according to a familiar person on the matter.

This is the first time in which NSO Group’s spyware, Pegasus will be used against US government personnel.

It was not known what individual or entity used the NSO technology to hack into the accounts, or what information was sought.

“We have been acutely concerned that commercial spyware like NSO Group software poses a serious counterintelligence and security risk to U.S. personnel,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing Friday.

Reuters was first to report on the story after the US Commerce Department blacklisted NSO Group from using any US technology.

Apple then sued the company last week while seeking to effectively shut down its hacking of all iPhones and other Apple products. Apple called NSO Group “amoral 21st century mercenaries.”

NSO Group said in a statement that it had terminated the “relevant customers’ access” to its hacking system, but did not say who the customers were. The company said its spying technology is blocked from hacking phones based in the U.S. and only sells to licensed customers.

“NSO has no way to know who the targets of the customers are, as such, we were not and could not have been aware of this case,” the company said.

While announcing the lawsuit, Apple sent out notifications globally to those whose iPhones were hacked using the Pegasus spyware among which are US State Department employees.

Apple declined to comment Friday on the Uganda hacks.

Marketed to governments for use solely against terrorists and criminals, Pegasus has been abused by NSO customers to spy on human rights activists, journalists, and politicians from Saudi Arabia to Mexico, including such high-profile targets as the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist murdered in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.

Apart from an array of Chinese companies, NSO Group which has been denounced for allowing such targeting was placed on the Commerce Department’s entity list just this past month over human rights violations according to Kevin Wolf, an attorney at Akin Gump and a former top commerce official during the Obama administration.

With the whole world coming against NSO Group, analysts now wonder if the company can survive financially under the new situation it has found itself.

Last week, Moody’s downgraded NSO Group’s financial outlook to negative, saying it risked defaulting on more than $300 million in loans as a result of “high uncertainty” of its ability to sell new licenses. It said NSO Group, which is privately held, has about 750 employees with 60 customers in more than 35 countries.

The impact on companies blacklisted by the Commerce Department, about half of which are Chinese, is often far broader than barring them from using U.S. technology. Wolf said many companies choose to avoid doing business with them completely “in order to eliminate the risk of an inadvertent violation” and the legal costs of analyzing whether they can.

While asked by The Associated Press if it can survive being on the entity list, the company’s spokesperson stated that they are working on all appropriate channels to reverse the Commerce Department’s decision against.