A new phishing attack is hitting US utilities with threats that their engineers could be in danger of losing their professional licenses. But in reality, the only danger comes from panicked employees clicking on the embedded Word document and infecting their computers with a remote access Trojan (RAT) and command-and-control proxy.
The RAT and proxy appear to originate with a nation-state actor rather than a financially motivated criminal organization. Researchers at Proofpoint found that the LookBack malware and many of the macros used in the campaign look very similar to tools used in a 2018 campaign against Japanese businesses. While the researchers note it's possible techniques are being used to mislead those trying to define attribution for the attack, a nation-state actor is almost certainly the attacker. They do not, however, identify the nation responsible.
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