Along with the typical malware samples, music and porn, the researchers unearthed some of the following:

Of course, Pesce said, such a letter would be useful to a terrorist who could easily crack the same P2P traffic. "This could absolutely get him killed," he said.

To help other security specialists conduct the same research and, in the process, help organizations tighten up the flow of information they share over P2P, Pesce and Douglas started what they call .

The Cactus Project page on pauldotcom.com names best-of-breed tools for conducting the research, including Mutella and the Gnutella Protocol.

As for the final takeaways, the researchers said it's clear security education hasn't reached the "unwashed masses" and that it remains far too easy to put sensitive data on P2P networks.