Patent ID: 9661004
Date: 2017-05-23
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for using reputation information to evaluate the trustworthiness of files obtained via torrent transactions, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: identifying, by the computing device, a torrent file that comprises metadata for facilitating a torrent transaction for obtaining a target file via a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol; identifying, by the computing device, a swarm of client devices involved in the torrent transaction by seeding or downloading at least a portion of the target file; obtaining, by the computing device, reputation information for the swarm of client devices involved in the torrent transaction, wherein the reputation information: identifying, based at least in part on the reputation information, a percentage of the client devices in the swarm whose overall health fails to reach a particular threshold; identifying, based at least in part on the reputation information, a percentage of the client devices in the swarm whose state of security fails to reach a certain threshold; determining, by the computing device, that the target file represents a potential security risk based at least in part on: performing, by the computing device, a security action on the target file, wherein the security action comprises blocking network traffic associated with the torrent transaction.