ANts P2P is an anonymous peer-to-peer open source file sharing software written in Java. The project was launched in 2004, and the code is licensed under the GPL.

Features

ANts P2P encrypts all traffic sent or received from others and proxies traffic between participants in the network to make it harder to determine the originating IP addresses. Some of its features include:

Automatic update of the software.

Point-to-point encryption (AES 128 - DH 512).

End to end encryption (AES 128 - DH 512).

Multipath routing for packets.

Preferential connections to give the network a fast backbone.

Support for partial downloads.

Support for the eDonkey link format.

Autosearch sources for active and interrupted downloads.

Finding parts of files through normal queries or queries by hash.

Full text indexing and searches over full file content and full file path location.

Non-anonymous internet relay chat.

Queries are encrypted asymmetrically. This means that only the originator can read the query results. Everyone can read the query string but this asymmetric approach reduces the potential of a node to do transit query analysis.

ANts P2P also allows users to offer web servers anonymously; these servers are only reachable from within the ANts P2P network. ANts P2P is however not an outproxy network which lets users reach services on the conventional internet; for this, an outproxy service such as Tor can be used separately.

Security

The data transfers run over indirect connections: Senders and receivers of a file do not hold a direct connection with each other, but the connection cascades over several nodes, so that neither party can trivially determine the other's identity.

The traffic between nodes is encrypted with AES, which prevents sniffing both from outsiders and from transit nodes. The encryption key exchange uses Diffie-Hellman algorithm.