The Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a group best known for its creation of the Back Orifice tool which has gained notoriety over the last few years, is working on an anti-censorship web browsing system.

The white hat hacking crew is developing a peer to peer networking tool which could be used to circumvent corporate or government censorship, but by the same token could be used by criminals such as paedophiles to hide their activities.

The tool, known as Peekabooty, works in a similar way to the controversial Napster and Gnutella peer to peer systems. There are no central servers; each client sends and receives information directly. But where Napster was used to trade MP3s, Peekabooty will be used to access otherwise censored web pages.

Peekabooty would also use encryption to further shield the data. According to the cDc, the system would be targeted at people living in government-oppressed countries, such as China, where certain content is filtered out.

But the software is bound to stir controversy in some circles when it is realised that the tool could also be used to hide the less savoury actions of criminals. However, it would also put an end to the number of court cases brought against ISPs for hosting controversial content.

It is understood that the cDc will release the tool in July at this year's Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas.

Last year the group created a storm of interest when it unveiled BO2k, an updated version of its Back Orifice remote control software.