FakeDetector: A measurement-based tool to get rid out of fake content in your BitTorrent Downloads

Fake content represents an important portion of those files shared in BitTorrent. 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 a few tens of users are responsible for 90% of the fake content. Furthermore, more than 99% of the analysed fake files are linked to either malware or scam websites. This creates a serious thread for the BitTorrent ecosystem. To address this issue, we present a new detection tool named FakeDetector that may prevent the download of almost 10 millions of fake files per year based on our evaluation. This could help to reduce the number of computer infections and scams suffered by BitTorrent users.