New Tool Promises To Passively ldentify BitTorrent Files

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 12, 2009 @07:50AM from the checks-for-the-evil-bit dept.

QuietR10t writes "A new technique has been developed for detecting and tracking illegal content transferred using the BitTorrent file-trading protocol. According to its creators, the approach can monitor networks without interrupting the flow of data and provides investigators with hard evidence of illicit file transfers. 'Our system differs in that it is completely passive, meaning that it does not change any information entering or leaving a network,' says Schrader." I wonder if it can specifically identify legal content, too.

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Evil Bit by Lord+Byron+II · 2009-02-12 07:55 · Score: 5, Funny

For the record, I have a rule in my iptables that specifically turns off the "evil bit" in any of outgoing packets. Thank God for Linux! =)
Re:Encryption? by noidentity · 2009-02-12 09:31 · Score: 5, Funny

this has some key things to overcome before it can be used:
* Has not been tested for false positives (explicitly stated by a researcher in the article).
Here's my implementation. It also hasn't been tested for false-positives, but I'm hopeful:

bool is_illicit_content( /* may need parameters in the future */ ) { return true; }