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The Air Force Institute of Technology is very proud to announce that Center for Cyberspace Research student Maj. Karl Schrader, who attended the 4^th Annual Dayton Engineering Sciences Symposium held at Wright State University October 27, won the “Best Presentation in Computer Sciences” award for his presentation entitled “A Novel Methodology for Detecting and Tracking Contraband Digital Files Transmitted Via the BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer Protocol.”

Schrader’s research, advised by Dr. Barry Mullins, considers the problem of identifying and tracking contraband digital files that are shared using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol. They propose a methodology that uses payload analysis to inspect each packet on a network for BitTorrent handshake messages, extracts the unique identifier of the file being shared, and compares that identifier against a list of known contraband files. If the file identifier is on the list, the entire packet is added to a Wireshark-readable log file for later analysis. They implement this methodology using an FPGA-based embedded software application, and then add several optimizations to the system to improve processing speed and probability of packet intercept under high network utilization. Testing shows that the final design is able to successfully capture and process BitTorrent handshake messages with a probability of at least 98.9% under a traffic load of 88.1 Mbps on a 100 Mbps network.