Work · alternatives · 2026

The Cyber Plumber's Handbook is a guide focused on SSH tunneling and port redirection techniques. Written primarily for penetration testers and red teamers, it also contains practical examples useful for network… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. The Cyber Plumber's Handbook – SSH Tunnel Like a Boss launched in 2019; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1MS
   Master SSH tunneling in an interactive lab▲13

   A little over a year ago I gave away over 4,600 copies of my intro to SSH tunneling book, The Cyber Plumber's Handbook, for free over a 48 hour period to the awesome folks here on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946941). Since then, I've been getting a lot of feedback about creating an interactive lab where SSH tunneling and port redirection techniques can be practiced in real scenarios. With a bit more time during the quarantine, I finally found the time to launch the lab portion. For the HN family, I'm offering the book and 2 weeks of lab time for 50% off…

   2020 · its alternatives →

2. 2IM
   I'm writing a free book called Computer Networks from Scratch▲792

   2022 · networksfromscratch.com · its alternatives →

3. 3IM
   I made my Raspberry Pi a secret phone homing server▲139

   Tools, calculator, and helpful information for network engineering, web developers, and IT professionals.

   2013 · tunnelsup.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   My Book Bulletproof TLS and PKI (Second Edition) Is Out▲134

   Hello HN. I am excited to share with you my new book, Bulletproof TLS and PKI. I've worked in this space since the very early days (think SSLv2), always frustrated with the fact that the field is vast but the documentation poor. That first led me to create SSL Labs (which ended up being very popular) and then the first edition of my book (in 2014), where I aimed to cover everything a curious person needed to know about SSL/TLS and PKI. Most importantly, it's a very practical book that you can use to just learn what you need at that moment. The second edition (just out) adds coverage of…

   2022 · feistyduck.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   I made an SSH tunnel manager to learn Go▲213

   The `boring` SSH tunnel manager. Contribute to alebeck/boring development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   I wrote a book on web application deployment▲326

   Learn the core transferable skills of setting up Linux virtual servers and Docker containers. Provision web servers, application servers, workers, and databases.

   2021 · deploymentfromscratch.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   A ninja's Handbook: A book on privacy, security, and anonymity online▲127

   This book was a project that I started after two years of constant paranoia and anxiety, trying to achieve a decent level of privacy and anonymity. From the things I learned during that time, I decided to write a book to help jump-start the privacy and anonymity journey of those who might be in the same situation. I know this book is not a complete guide on how to harden your devices and operating systems, and it wasn't meant to be. It was supposed to cover the very fundamentals of privacy, security, and anonymity rather than the highly technical stuff that might exhaust and frustrate…

   2024 · zolagonano.github.io · its alternatives →

8. 8
   IP Guide – Info on IP addresses, Networks, and ASNs▲363

   Hey all, wanted to share my recent weekend hack project. I wanted to improve upon the existing space for looking up information about IP addresses and ASNs. The backend is written in Rust and pulls BGP data every 8 hours from the RIPE RIS project to build up a routing table and also adds geolocation information. The frontend is using React and Tailwind. Would love any feedback or suggestions on what to improve.

   2023 · ip.guide · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Servers for Hackers eBook▲90

   What programmers need to know about web servers.

   2015 · book.serversforhackers.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    A Short IPv6 Guide for Home IPv4 Admins▲69

    A Short IPv6 Guide for Home IPv4 Admins. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

    2024 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11AF
    Apply for a job through SSH, $ ssh jobs.hackclub.com▲251

    2021 · jobs.hackclub.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    A toy version of Wireshark (student project)▲265

    Hi everyone, I recently published a small open-source project. It’s a minimal network packet analyzer written in Go — designed more like a learning toy than a replacement for Wireshark. It currently supports parsing basic protocols like TLS, DNS, and HTTP, and includes a tiny fuzzing engine to test payload responses. You can inspect raw packet content directly from the terminal. The output is colored for readability, and the code structure is kept simple and clear. The entire program is very small — just about 400 lines of Go code. I know it’s not anywhere near Wireshark’s level, and I still…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13SA
    Shhhbb, an SSH BBS▲188

    Hello all :) I made this BBS for fun and thought you all would enjoy it. It's not perfect, but it's been a fun exercise! see it: https://asciinema.org/a/Emg6SWrXMV6cehfQxrw1GRu75 try it: ssh -p 2223 shhhbb.com host it: https://github.com/donuts-are-good/shhhbb/releases/latest why? Every year I challenge myself in some new way, this year it is to push one project per week. You might recognize my static site generator [0] or my releaser for go [1] from previous posts as one of these weekly projects. If you want to join me in doing this, it's…

    2023 · donuts-are-good.github.io · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Digital Superpowers, a free book highlighting various FOSS tools▲91

    I wrote this intermediate-level book as a showcase of various FOSS, mostly command line tools. I'm a nuclear engineer and found myself teaching other nuclear, mechanical, and electrical engineers these tools again and again, so I wanted to package them into book form. I attempted to make it even broader interest, so it's not just about engineering. In the end, it's a fairly eclectic set of topics. Anyway, after selling for a few years, I just decided to release a slightly updated version of it in full for free. You'll find full HTML, PDF and ePub versions (all built with Sphinx) at the link.

    2024 · digitalsuperpowers.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Threat Road▲57

    Hey HN, I got tired of cybersecurity news reading like a compliance manual written by a sleep-deprived lawyer, so I built Threat Road — a daily, 5-minute, plain-English cybersecurity briefing that’s actually fun. Would love your feedback, especially from people who do IR, AppSec, dev, ops, or just like watching the internet catch fire in slow motion. (And if you hate it, tell me why so I can fix it before it becomes another abandoned Substack graveyard.)

    Nov 2025 · threatroad.substack.com · its alternatives →

16. 16MT
    My Technical Blogging book for hackers and founders is now in Beta▲80

    2011 · pragprog.com · its alternatives →

17. 17IW
    I wrote a beginner SRE book, and it's free today▲31

    Hello! I wrote an introductory SRE Book: Site Reliability Engineering Tidbits and it's free today! These are short fun chapters about SRE, monitoring, debugging, observability, and resiliency. This book aims to provide hands on examples of implementing a number of concepts described in Google's SRE books. It also describes how i've seen SRE concepts impact some of the organizations I've worked in. A couple chapters are hands on debugging exercises going through the process of debugging applications based on data. I'm excited because every chapter describes something that I've done in paying…

    2022 · amazon.com · its alternatives →

18. 18IW
    I wrote a book on Site Reliability Engineering▲14

    Hello! I just published a book on Site Reliability Engineering. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QNZC2LL This book is a collection of 28 chapters on SRE concepts, such as observability, monitoring, Service Level Objectives (SLOs), alerting, resilience and debugging. I adapted each chapter from blog posts I've written over the last 4 years. Most of the chapters detailed concepts that I applied while working at $dayjob, so they are 100% proven in real business settings :) ------ Some info on the backstory. Last year I started writing a book on my software development…

    2022 · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Information Security Handbook▲31

    Contribute to davidbailey/Information_Security_Handbook development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    A native Hacker News reader with integrated todo/done tracking▲54

    Hey HN! I'm excited to share a tool I've been working on - a native Hacker News reader built with Rust and egui. Here's a screenshot: https://github.com/haojiang99/hacker_news_reader/blob/main/s.... As a daily HN reader, I've always struggled with keeping track of interesting posts I want to read later. Browser tabs pile up, bookmarks get forgotten, and I lose track of what I've already read. I needed a way to: 1. Browse HN efficiently (across all sections - hot, new, show, ask, jobs, best) 2. Quickly mark posts as "todo" for later reading 3. Mark posts as…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Hello Tech Pros: GitHub's Anti-Harassment Tools▲61

    and the open source Codes of Conduct

    2016 · gadgetsprimer.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    I'm writing a book – Cloudflare for Speed and Security▲20

    Hey HN, I'm so excited to finally share with you what I've been working on recently. One month ago I asked my audience what they wanted to learn about Websites, APIs and Servers security [0]. From the feedback, I've identified a few recurring pain points that I've started to address (and many more) in this new book. From theory to practice, you will learn how low-level network and security protocols work. How to configure Cloudflare to secure and scale your web applications. How to create serverless applications and which database to chose with serverless functions. How to optimize your…

    2023 · kerkour.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Computer Networks▲55

    Ideal introduction to the networking field

    2016 · amazon.in · its alternatives →

24. 24
    I wrote a book about self-hosting for a small group of friends/family▲30

    If you're not yet self-hosting or looking to adjust your self-hosting setup, you might find it useful. Edit: The ebook is available now for purchase/download. Earlier beta was mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40269993

    2024 · selfhostbook.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →