Defensive Application Design: Preventing Buffer Overflows and Memory Leaks in C/C++ for Linux

Memory corruption is the root cause of the most severe security breaches in computing history. Buffer overflows, use-after-free conditions, and memory leaks continue to compromise critical infrastructure, embedded systems, and cloud platforms. Yet C and C++ remain irreplaceable at the heart of modern operating systems, networking stacks, and high-performance applications. This book equips intermediate C and C++ developers with a complete, actionable framework for building secure, production-grade software on Linux. Written for systems programmers who already understand basic C syntax, it bridges the gap between writing functional code and building resilient, secure infrastructure. Inside, you will learn: How Linux organizes virtual memory, stack frames, heap regions, and ELF binary sections The precise mechanics of buffer overflows, use-after-free vulnerabilities, integer bugs, and memory leaks How to eliminate unsafe standard library functions and replace them with bounded, production-safe alternatives Defensive design patterns including the single-exit cleanup pattern, arena allocators, and centralized resource management How to harden builds with GCC and Clang flags, including stack canaries, RELRO, and Position Independent Executables How Linux enforces Address Space Layout Randomization, Data Execution Prevention, and Control-Flow Integrity How to use AddressSanitizer, Valgrind, and Cppcheck to catch leaks and overflows before deployment How to integrate fuzz testing and static analysis into CI/CD pipelines for continuous security verification How to apply the principle of least privilege and sandbox untrusted components to contain breaches Whether you maintain a legacy codebase, build high-performance network services, or develop embedded systems, this book provides the deep technical grounding and engineering discipline to write software that withstands adversarial conditions. Stop fixing bugs after breaches. Build systems that prevent them by design.