EarthStation 5
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Earth Station 5 (ES5) is a peer to peer network and file sharing program that has put special emphasis on providing security to uploaders and downloaders. This P2P application supports UDP multi source downloading and "spoofing' to obscure and forge the origin of the files traded, and proxies to further protect the identities of the uploaders. There is also an option to run Earth Station as a private network, disconnected from the global Internet, and an option to organize the shared files using a built-in webserver.
Earth Station 5 connects to KaZaA and Gnutella 2 filesharing networks. It supports their supernode structure, where individual users (Planets) connect to supernodes (Stars) that index files available on the network.
The creators of this program have also been adamant in ther opposition to recording companies and current attitude to copyright, unconditionally supporting personal filesharing. The anonymous authors claim to be based in a refugee camp in Jenin.
In September 2003 the program became the target of a controversy, as malicious code was uncovered in ES5. By sending a specially formed packet, the attacker could delete any file with a known path on the target computer. It has been alleged that it was created by anti-piracy companies to lure people into using their program, exposing their copyrighted files and then deleting them. The authors denied the allegations, argued that the function was retained from older builds, where it was used to control ES5 servers, and said they have fixed the problem.
External links
- EarthStation 5 P2P Home Page (http://www.es5.com)
- Earthreactor Home Page (http://www.earthreactor.com)
- ES5 contains malicious code (http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/10022003i.php) - a detailed report on the issue from ZeroPaid
- A discussion on Broadband Reports (http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/33913)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61110-2004Feb21?language=printer http://p2pnet.net/story/827