SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives Learn more →
Top 23 C Security Projects
-
Not ideal.
This appears to be fixed as of April (at least for Apache). [0].
[0] - https://github.com/nginx/nginx/commit/365694160a85229a7cb006...
-
SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
-
Project mention: Building a comfortable workflow for debugging an old version of the Linux kernel | dev.to | 2026-05-24
FROM ubuntu:16.04 RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \ build-essential \ gcc \ make \ libncurses5-dev \ libssl-dev \ bc \ bison \ flex \ nano \ git \ cpio \ openssh-client \ wget \ bzip2 \ ca-certificates \ linux-headers-generic \ && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* WORKDIR /opt RUN git clone https://github.com/radareorg/radare2 \ && radare2/sys/install.sh --install \ && rm -rf radare2 WORKDIR /build
-
systeminformer
A free, powerful, multi-purpose tool that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware. Brought to you by Winsider Seminars & Solutions, Inc. @ https://windows-internals.com
Project mention: Show HN: Network Monitor – a GUI to spot anomalous connections on your Linux | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-11-24I wish Linux had two more things:
- https://github.com/winsiderss/systeminformer power-user process explorer
-
Now, we can create an issue on OpenVPN bugtracker on Github. Thanks to @cron2, he asked me to use gdb to see what's happening.
-
Compare your implementation to Nmap's source code - industry standard for 20+ years.
-
Unicorn Engine
Unicorn CPU emulator framework (ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, PowerPC, RiscV, S390x, TriCore, X86)
-
capstone
Capstone disassembly/disassembler framework for ARM, ARM64 (ARMv8), Alpha, BPF, Ethereum VM, HPPA, LoongArch, M68K, M680X, Mips, MOS65XX, PPC, RISC-V(rv32G/rv64G), SH, Sparc, SystemZ, TMS320C64X, TriCore, Webassembly, XCore and X86.
Project mention: Capstone – lightweight multi-platform, multi-architecture disassembly framework | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-06-02 -
Project mention: Arkime: An open source, large scale, full packet capturing and indexing system | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-09-16
-
-
-
AFLplusplus
The fuzzer afl++ is afl with community patches, qemu 5.1 upgrade, collision-free coverage, enhanced laf-intel & redqueen, AFLfast++ power schedules, MOpt mutators, unicorn_mode, and a lot more!
[+] Enabled environment variable AFL_DEBUG with value 1 [+] Enabled environment variable AFL_DEBUG with value 1 [+] Enabled environment variable AFL_NO_UI with value 1 afl-fuzz++4.33c based on afl by Michal Zalewski and a large online community [+] AFL++ is maintained by Marc "van Hauser" Heuse, Dominik Maier, Andrea Fioraldi and Heiko "hexcoder" Eißfeldt [+] AFL++ is open source, get it at https://github.com/AFLplusplus/AFLplusplus [+] NOTE: AFL++ >= v3 has changed defaults and behaviours - see README.md [+] No -M/-S set, autoconfiguring for "-S default" [*] Getting to work... [+] Using exploration-based constant power schedule (EXPLORE) [+] Enabled testcache with 50 MB [+] Generating fuzz data with a length of min=1 max=1048576 [*] Checking CPU scaling governor... [!] WARNING: Could not check CPU min frequency [+] Disabling the UI because AFL_NO_UI is set. [+] You have 8 CPU cores and 3 runnable tasks (utilization: 38%). [+] Try parallel jobs - see /opt/homebrew/Cellar/afl++/4.33c_1/share/doc/afl/fuzzing_in_depth.md#c-using-multiple-cores [*] Setting up output directories... [+] Output directory exists but deemed OK to reuse. [*] Deleting old session data... [+] Output dir cleanup successful. [*] Validating target binary... [+] Persistent mode binary detected. [*] Scanning 'fuzz-inputs'... [*] Creating hard links for all input files... [+] Loaded a total of 1 seeds. [*] Spinning up the fork server...
-
Suricata
Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System, Intrusion Prevention System and Network Security Monitoring engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community.
-
OSSEC
OSSEC is an Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System that performs log analysis, file integrity checking, policy monitoring, rootkit detection, real-time alerting and active response.
-
Project mention: Building a Production eBPF Observability & Security Stack for Kubernetes in 2026 | dev.to | 2026-03-30
# Install Tetragon via Helm helm repo add cilium https://helm.cilium.io helm repo update helm install tetragon cilium/tetragon \ --namespace kube-system \ --set tetragon.grpc.address="localhost:54321" \ --set tetragon.exportFilename="/var/run/cilium/tetragon/tetragon.log" \ --set tetragon.enableProcessCred=true \ --set tetragon.enableProcessNs=true # Install tetra CLI (for event observation) GOOS=$(go env GOOS) GOARCH=$(go env GOARCH) curl -L --remote-name-all \ https://github.com/cilium/tetragon/releases/latest/download/tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xzvf tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz rm tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz
-
-
Project mention: FreeBSD Capsicum vs. Linux Seccomp Process Sandboxing | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-09
-
unikraft
A next-generation cloud native kernel designed to unlock best-in-class performance, security primitives and efficiency savings.
I've been using unikraft (https://unikraft.org/) unikernels for a while and the startup times are quite impressive (easily sub-second for our Rust application).
-
-
honggfuzz
Security oriented software fuzzer. Supports evolutionary, feedback-driven fuzzing based on code coverage (SW and HW based)
-
-
Project mention: What Really Happens When You Access AWS: Complete Data Flow Example | dev.to | 2025-11-11
tcpdump - Command-line packet analyzer
-
Project mention: Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript Runtime and Ecosystem | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-07-11
on linux its kvm, on darwin its hypervisor.framework, the memory is not upfront, by default 256mb is lazy allocated, and ~35mb are used by both ant + the vm. the kernel is https://nanos.org with patches to get ant+networking running smoothly
-
Project mention: Evaluating and mitigating the growing risk of LLM-discovered 0-days | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-06
Glad to see that they brought in humans to validate and patch vulnerabilities. Although, I really wish they linked to the actual patches. Here's what I could find:
https://cgit.ghostscript.com/cgi-bin/cgit.cgi/ghostpdl.git/c...
https://github.com/OpenSC/OpenSC/pull/3554
https://github.com/dloebl/cgif/pull/84
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
C Security discussion
C Security related posts
-
OpenVPN Daemon Double Free Bug
-
Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
-
SHA-2 Hash Functions in Dart
-
Linux 7.1
-
Capstone – lightweight multi-platform, multi-architecture disassembly framework
-
We open sourced another feature of our commercial EDR Show us love
-
Everything needs to be open source. Why I decided to open source my project
-
A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 12 Jul 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Security projects in C? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nginx | 31,262 |
| 2 | radare2 | 24,288 |
| 3 | systeminformer | 15,358 |
| 4 | OpenVPN | 14,210 |
| 5 | nmap | 13,182 |
| 6 | Unicorn Engine | 9,147 |
| 7 | capstone | 8,885 |
| 8 | arkime | 7,409 |
| 9 | aircrack-ng | 7,355 |
| 10 | system-bus-radio | 6,683 |
| 11 | AFLplusplus | 6,647 |
| 12 | Suricata | 6,442 |
| 13 | OSSEC | 5,027 |
| 14 | tetragon | 4,817 |
| 15 | HyperDbg | 3,927 |
| 16 | openssh-portable | 3,900 |
| 17 | unikraft | 3,775 |
| 18 | rizin | 3,710 |
| 19 | honggfuzz | 3,363 |
| 20 | pycryptodome | 3,240 |
| 21 | tcpdump | 3,197 |
| 22 | nanos | 3,165 |
| 23 | OpenSC | 3,051 |
Sponsored
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
www.saashub.com