unable to install netcat on wsl running ubuntu 18.04 [duplicate]

I am having problems with apt on my WSL installation of Ubuntu 18.04.

Whenever I try to install a package with apt I get this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: [...]

E: Could not read response to hello message from hook [ ! -f /usr/bin/snap ] || /usr/bin/snap advise-snap --from-apt 2>/dev/null || true: Success
E: Could not read response to hello message from hook [ ! -f /usr/bin/snap ] || /usr/bin/snap advise-snap --from-apt 2>/dev/null || true: Success

I believe snapd/snappy is the culprit here, but I have not been able to find a way to solve this. Afaik snapd is not supported on WSL and I assume it's been installed in an update.

I am hoping to find a solution that won't require me to nuke the whole installation and having to spend hours setting everything up fresh.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: original output from apt --version was apt 1.6.8 (amd64). An upgrade to 1.7.0 (amd64) did not seem to fix the issue.

If you want a quick and dirty fix, you can remove the offending apt hook by typing:

sudo rm -rf /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20snapd.conf