Searching for Malware in BitTorrent

One of the most widely publicized aspects of computer security has been the presence and propagation of malware. Malware has adapted to many different changing technologies, including recently-popular P2P systems. While previous work has examined P2P networks and protocols like KaZaA and Gnutella for malware, little has been done so far that examines BitTorrent. This project explored BitTorrent for the presence of malware, and discovered a significant portion of malware in the downloaded le set. Statistics on torrents infected with malware were gathered and analyzed to find patterns that are helpful in creating basic filtering heuristics. While these heuristics may work in simple cases, several easy ways they can be defeated were found.