Attackers looking to steal employee credentials from organizations tied to the industrial sector deployed highly-targeted operations that delivered malicious PowerShell scripts in images. The technique is called steganography and in these incidents the actors used public hosting imaging services to evade network traffic scanners and control tools that would flag the malicious download. Victims in multiple countries (Japan, the U.K., Germany, Italy) were identified. Some of them supply equipment and software solutions to industrial enterprises. The custom exception message bypasses automatic analysis of the malware and also makes it more difficult for researchers to check.
Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/highly-targeted-attacks-on-industrial-sector-hide-payload-in-images/