WASTE
WASTE is a peer-to-peer file sharing and communication infrastructure designed to support small groups of people who want a closed loop of data sharing. Britt recently mentioned it in an article on the Elite Torrent shutdown as an alternative to the open file sharing systems like public BitTorrent trackers and file sharing services like Kazaa. The initial setup is somewhat complicated, requiring the generation of a key for the data encryption component, but once everyone in your mini-p2p network is setup, it's a piece of cake to swap files between a trusted group of friends and business associates. While file sharing gets a bad rap as a tool for taking money from the pockets of poor entertainment executives, I see WASTE as something far more useful. If you want to share any file with several people securely the primary ways to accomplish the sharing currently are to attach it to an encrypted email message or to share it by way of an encrypted file with complex username/password combinations. With WASTE, simply make the file available to everyone in the trusted network (which is invitation only controlled by the members, so there's no chance of outsiders getting in) and let everyone in the network know the file is available. While this isn't the perfect file sharing solution, because each new member of your trusted network must acquire the appropriate public key from each other member to receive encrypted data, it is one of the most secure methods for sharing data with a group. [Windows 9x/2k/XP | Mac OS X | Linux $0.00]