  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.
