AddressSanitizer anatomy

What are sanitizers and how does AddressSanitizer work? In the talk we will consider the main mechanisms used by ASan to identify memory access errors. We will look in the compiler (clang and gcc) and see how code generation changes when fsanitize=address option is turned on and what it can lead to. We will also look at the ASan runtime library and how it interacts with the generated code. And we will consider the examples when ASan might make a mistake. Finally, we will figure out how ASan generates error reports, what problems may arise and how to solve them.

The purpose of the talk is to make AddressSanitizer more understandable. After the talk people will be able to better orient in ASan and understand the limits of its capabilities. The audience will also receive some advice for resolving problems that may arise in practice when ASam is implemented in a project.