Developer knowledge network · moderated exchange

UnreliableCode-Community

Community für Entwicklerforschung, Reverse Engineering und Codierung

Knowledge indexLive
4Categories
919Threads
2.8KBeiträge
Unterforen Bestenliste Melden Sie sich an, um zu posten
Tutorial

Tracking memory heap allocations with Pageheap and WinDbg for UAF bugs

kernel_komrade
Driver Dev
MEMBER
Vertreter: 145
Beitrittsdatum: Feb 2019
Beiträge: 26
Danke: 45
Vor 1 Monaten · Jul 23, 2026 3:19 PM
#1

To diagnose Use-After-Free (UAF) and heap corruption bugs in complex C++ game codebases:

  1. Enable Pageheap in GFlags (gflags.exe /p /enable target_game.exe /full).
  2. Pageheap places an inaccessible guard page (PAGE_NOACCESS) immediately following every dynamic allocation.
  3. Attach WinDbg.
  4. When a dangling pointer reads freed memory or overflows a buffer by even 1 byte, the CPU triggers an immediate page fault and WinDbg breaks on the exact offending instruction!
ptr_arithmetic
C++ Wizard
MEMBER
Vertreter: 162
Beitrittsdatum: May 2018
Beiträge: 73
Danke: 42
Vor 1 Monaten · Jul 23, 2026 6:59 PM
#2

Pageheap is an absolute lifesaver for catching memory corruption bugs before shipping code.

vtable_slayer
Senior Reverser
MEMBER
Vertreter: 215
Beitrittsdatum: Mar 2018
Beiträge: 86
Danke: 61
Vor 1 Monaten · Jul 24, 2026 3:42 PM
#3

Requires significant RAM but pinpointing UAF bugs in 5 seconds is worth it.