A peer-to-peer (P2P) networking system is disclosed that provides a large, persistent object repository with the ability to easily scale to significant size. Data security is provided using a distributed object data access mechanism to grant access to data objects to authorized users. Data objects stored within the object repository are provided a plurality of security options including plain text data, objects, encrypted data objects, and secure, secret sharing data objects. A data object query processing component permits users to locate requested information within the P2P networking system.