Advanced · Module 9 · Lesson 4 of 13

Memory and Concurrency Sanitizers: ASan, UBSan, TSan, and Valgrind Massif

Detect memory corruption with AddressSanitizer shadow memory, catch undefined behavior with UBSan, trace data races with ThreadSanitizer, and profile heap peaks using Valgrind Massif.

ProAbout 16 minutes

By the end you can

Inspect memory corruption and use-after-free defects using AddressSanitizer shadow byte tracking
Catch integer overflows, null dereferences, and misalignment traps with UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer
Diagnose multi-threaded data races and missing synchronization with ThreadSanitizer vector clocks
Profile dynamic heap consumption peaks and allocation graphs using Valgrind Massif

Builds on Dynamic System Call and Userspace Tracing: strace, ltrace, and kprobes.

01 · A question first

Why can a heap buffer overflow silently overwrite neighboring variables for months without crashing, only to take down a production server under heavy load? And how do sanitizers catch these latent bugs at the exact instruction they occur with zero false positives?

Make a guess before you read on.

02 · The idea

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What's inside

Start with the problem
How the idea works
Production Workflows and Compilation Flags
What it costs
Pitfalls and variations
Where it is used