TorrentGuard: stopping scam and malware distribution in the BitTorrent ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the prevalence of fake content in BitTorrent, revealing significant malicious activity, and introduces TorrentGuard, a detection tool that can prevent millions of fake downloads annually, enhancing user safety.

Contribution

The paper provides the first large-scale measurement of fake content in BitTorrent and introduces TorrentGuard, a tool for early detection and prevention of malicious files.

Findings

Fake content accounts for 35% of shared files.

A small number of users are responsible for 90% of fake content.

TorrentGuard can prevent over 35 million fake downloads annually.

Abstract

In this paper we conduct a large scale measurement study in order to analyse the fake content publishing phenomenon in the BitTorrent Ecosystem. Our results reveal that fake content represents an important portion (35%) of those files shared in BitTorrent and just a few tens of users are responsible for 90% of this content. Furthermore, more than 99% of the analysed fake files are linked to either malware or scam websites. This creates a serious threat for the BitTorrent ecosystem. To address this issue, we present a new detection tool named TorrentGuard for the early detection of fake content. Based on our evaluation this tool may prevent the download of more than 35 millions of fake files per year. This could help to reduce the number of computer infections and scams suffered by BitTorrent users. TorrentGuard is already available and it can be accessed through both a webpage or a Vuze plugin.