BUT2: A Novel Tool for Tracking and Identifying Illegal Files Shared on the BitTorrent Network Through Passive Searches

Peer-to-peer networks (P2P), such as BitTorrent, have revolutionized the internet by enabling direct content exchange between users and forming online communities. However, these networks are often used to share illegal content, such as child sexual abuse material, complicating the identification and investigation of criminals due to their decentralized nature and concealment techniques. This work proposes the development of a tool to identify nodes trafficking illegal content on the BitTorrent network. The results obtained in this study demonstrate that the proposed solution with just one search node manages to gather a larger number of IPs, totaling 4677 IPs, with an average of 155.9 IPs per day, or approximately 6.49 IPs per hour.