How to remove Wacatac trojan

What is Wacatac trojan

Also known as Trojan:Win32/Wacatac, Wacatac is a trojan-type infection that is capable of doing truly irreversible damage. Trojans are generally the virus used to distribute other malicious software. When trojan gets on your computer, it forces so-called “chain installations”. The amount of software that can be delivered may vary broadly, however, the most popular is Ransomware that encrypts files stored on your PC asking to pay a ransom as a result. Unfortunately, these infiltrations can lead to massive privacy loss by handing personal data to third parties for making a profit. IP addresses, passwords, credentials, and location are often the most valuable information that extortionists are looking for. Since the rise of Bitcoin, trojans also started distributing crypto mining software that mines cryptocurrencies without users’ consent. These manipulations require a vast amount of system resources which can slow down the computer or even lead to the entire system collapse. Sometimes, trojans can contain adware and browser hijackers that disseminate deceptive ads and redirects. This can also lead to system infection that can put you in a meltdown. The difficulty of removal depends on what type of software was bundled by a trojan. However, with the set of necessary tools, you will be able to delete trojans and other trojan-caused pieces in the section below.

How Wacatac trojan infected your computer

Trojans can be distributed either through fake cracking tools or e-mail spam. Cracking tools were originally designed to bypass the activation of licensed software. And because of its demand, hackers also promote their own cracking tools that contain malicious software like trojans. Another popular method is e-mail spam campaigns that include malicious attachments and obtrusive messages for gullible users to click on them. The attachments may be presented as redirecting links, PDFs, MS Office documents, bills, invoices, updates, news, and other sorts of legitimately-looking data to increase the trust of users and make them click on them. This negligent attitude immediately plants trojans into users’ PCs like Wacatac depriving lots of nerves of innocent people. Remember also that trojans can inject your system via fake updates and installation kits that are usually shown on freeware hosting pages and other pirated resources. This means that trojans can be downloaded/installed alongside other software that can be loaded from unreliable pages. Trojans are a very sneaky thing that has to be treated specially. We have created instructions on how to get rid of these attackers down below.

1. Download Wacatac Removal Tool
2. Use Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool to remove Wacatac
3. Use Autoruns to remove Wacatac
4. Files, folders and registry keys of Wacatac
5. Other aliases of Wacatac
6. How to protect from threats, like Wacatac

Remove Wacatac manually

Manual removal of Wacatac by inexperienced users may become a difficult task because it does not create entries in Add/Remove Programs under Control Panel, does not install browser extensions, and uses random file names. However, there are pre-installed instruments in the Windows system, that allow you to detect and remove malware without using third-party applications. One of them is Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. It comes with Windows Update in Windows 11, 10, 8. 8.1. For older operating system you can download it here: 64-bit version | 32-bit version.

Remove Wacatac using Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

1. Type mrt in the search box near Start Menu.
2. Run mrt clicking on found item.
3. Click Next button.
4. Choose one of the scan modes Quick scan, Full scan, Customize scan (Full scan recommended).
5. Click Next button.
6. Click on View detailed results of the scan link to view the scan details.
7. Click Finish button.

Remove Wacatac using Autoruns

Wacatac often sets up to run at Windows startup as an Autorun entry or Scheduled task.

1. Download Autoruns using this link.
2. Extract the archive and run Autoruns.exe file.
3. In Options menu make sure there are checkboxes near Hide Empty Locations, Hide Microsoft Entries, and Hide Windows Entries.
4. Search for suspicious entries with weird names or running from locations like: C:\{username}\AppData\Roaming.
5. Right-click on suspicious entry and choose Delete. This will prevent the threat to run at startup.
6. Switch to Scheduled Tasks tab and do the same.
7. To remove files themselves, click on suspicious entries and choose Jump to Entry…. Remove files or registry keys found.

Remove files, folder and registry keys of Wacatac

Wacatac files and folders


DHL Shipment Notification 3300777400-Delivery for 10 July 2019_pdf.gz
Unimpartial.exe


Wacatac registry keys


KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
{randomname} = "%AppDataLocal%\{randomname}\{randomname}.hta"


Aliases of Wacatac

How to protect from threats, like Wacatac, in future

Standard Windows protection or any decent third-party antivirus (Norton, Avast, Kaspersky) should be able to detect and remove Wacatac. However, if you got infected with Wacatac with existing and updated security software, you may consider changing it. To feel safe and protect your PC from Wacatac on all levels (browser, e-mail attachments, Word or Excel scripts, file system) we recommend a leading provider of internet security solutions – BitDefender. Its solutions both for home and business users proved to be one of the most advanced and effective. Choose and get your BitDefender protection via the button below: