OFFERBrontok
Brontok is a newly released Trojan horse virus. As such, Brontok is very dangerous and capable of inflicting a wide range of damage on the infected machine.
The chances of having your computer infected with a Trojan virus like Brontok are very high if you are not careful enough with what you do on the Internet. The reason is, this malware can be encountered all over the Internet and mostly spreads via well-disguised transmitters, which are very difficult to distinguish from normal and harmless web content. A single click on a legitimate-looking link, an ad, a pop-up, or an email attachment may land you the virus if the piece of content you interacted with was actually contaminated. And, sadly, there will be no symptoms that would indicate the contamination.
From that moment on, the nasty Trojan can secretly launch various harmful activities in the background of your system and cause issues and serious damage to all of your data, software, and OS. That’s why, if you are one of the victims of Brontok or Energy.exe, the information in the next lines may be just what you need to carefully locate and remove the infection from your computer. Our “How to remove” team has prepared a detailed removal guide with step-by-step instructions on how to detect and eliminate Brontok in a fast and reliable manner. This specific infection seems to have focused on spamming users’ mailboxes with a demanding message that asks them to send a certain amount of money to a specific Bitcoin wallet.
How seriously can Brontok damage your computer?
Since most Trojan-based infections tend to be extremely versatile in their purposes and capabilities, we cannot tell you what exactly to expect from a sophisticated malware infection like Brontok. The criminal creators of the virus may decide to use its harmful code for a number of illegal activities such as data corruption, theft of sensitive information, espionage, system destruction, and even distribution of viruses such as ransomware, spyware, or other malicious programs.
There is definitely no need to wait and see what will happen to your PC because the damage may be irreparable in some of the cases. That’s why we strongly advise you to take immediate action and remove Brontok from your system with the help of the set of instructions in the removal guide below.
How to protect your PC from Trojans
If you are a frequent computer user, you cab surely name at least a few of the most common potential sources of computer threats. Trojans, in particular, can be encountered in almost anything that is available on the Internet – from pirated programs, torrents, spam email attachments, ads, and shady webpages to legitimate-looking messages, offers, software installers and tools that users may download for free from the web.
Even reliable-looking websites may be compromised and infected with Trojan code and that’s why it is really important to always be mindful while browsing the Internet. Try to carefully filter the content that you interact with and stay away from anything that may appear fishy or suspicious. Unless a certain malware piece can infect you without the need for any action on your end (such viruses are pretty rare), the safety of your PC is largely in your own hands and you should try to protect it not only by avoiding potential malware transmitters but also by installing reliable antivirus software on the machine.
The reason is, no matter how careful you are, there is always a chance that you may get tricked and thus interact something harmful. Moreover, in many instances, the Trojan horse infections don’t have visible symptoms and this is where the role of the antivirus program comes – it is designed to spot and locate the harmful content and notify you about it so that you can take immediate action to remove it.
SUMMARY:
| Name | Brontok |
| Type | Trojan |
| Danger Level | High (Trojans are often used as a backdoor for Ransomware) |
| Symptoms | This Trojan rarely shows any visible symptoms, that’s why it is best detected with security software. |
| Distribution Method | Spam messages, infected email attachments, malvertising, harmful downloads, infected files and links, malicious software installers. |
| Detection Tool | We tested that SpyHunter successfully removes parasite* and we recommend downloading it. Manual removal may take hours, it can harm your system if you re not careful, and parasite may reinstall itself at the end if you don't delete its core files. |
Remove Brontok Removal
If you have a Windows virus, continue with the guide below.
If you have a Mac virus, please use our How to remove Ads on Mac guide.
If you have an Android virus, please use our Android Malware Removal guide.
If you have an iPhone virus, please use our iPhone Virus Removal guide
Some of the steps will likely require you to exit the page. Bookmark it for later reference.
Reboot in Safe Mode (use this guide if you don’t know how to do it).
WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!
Press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC at the same time and go to the Processes Tab. Try to determine which processes are dangerous.
Right click on each of them and select Open File Location. Then scan the files with our free online virus scanner:
After you open their folder, end the processes that are infected, then delete their folders.
Note: If you are sure something is part of the infection – delete it, even if the scanner doesn’t flag it. No anti-virus program can detect all infections.
Hold together the Start Key and R. Type appwiz.cpl –> OK.
You are now in the Control Panel. Look for suspicious entries. Uninstall it/them. If you see a screen like this when you click Uninstall, choose NO:
Type msconfig in the search field and hit enter. A window will pop-up:
Startup —> Uncheck entries that have “Unknown” as Manufacturer or otherwise look suspicious.
- Remember this step – if you have reason to believe a bigger threat (like ransomware) is on your PC, check everything here.
Hold the Start Key and R – copy + paste the following and click OK:
notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts
A new file will open. If you are hacked, there will be a bunch of other IPs connected to you at the bottom. Look at the image below:
If there are suspicious IPs below “Localhost” – write to us in the comments.
Type Regedit in the windows search field and press Enter.
Once inside, press CTRL and F together and type the virus’s Name. Right click and delete any entries you find with a similar name. If they don’t show up this way, go manually to these directories and delete/uninstall them:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—–Random Directory. It could be any one of them – ask us if you can’t discern which ones are malicious.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—-Windows—CurrentVersion—Run– Random
HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—Internet Explorer—-Main—- Random
If the guide doesn’t help, download the anti-virus program we recommended or try our free online virus scanner. Also, you can always ask us in the comments for help!
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