Detect C++ Memory Leaks with ALSan: Attachable Leak Sanitizer
summary
An attachable leak sanitizer built on eBPF uprobe and BCC hooks malloc/free in running Linux processes, saving allocation metadata in kernel space so processes do not need restarting. It runs periodic LSan-style reachability scans (can report every ~10s), reproduces original LSan traces when attached before the allocations, and finds real bugs in upstream projects like json. Limitations: needs root, requires kernel configs (works since ~Linux 5.4), cannot trace inlined/non-traceable functions, may miss register roots unless the process is suspended.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00C++ memory leaks
- 2:02Limitations of existing tools
- 5:51The attachable solution
- 12:41How attachable LSAN works
- 15:23Demo and Q&A
- 19:45Detection algorithms
- 29:06Testing with long cases
- 33:20Real world applications
- 37:03Build guide and conclusion
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