his is a short guide on how to override malloc / free in C/C++ on linux so that custom tracing / logging can be used on the functions to detect double free's

It is actually very simple to do. All you require is a short program that is compiled into a shared lib. Then this lib is pre loaded before your program loads and instead of binding to the libc functions it will bind to the ones in
the library.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dlfcn.h>

extern void abort();

void *malloc(int size) {
        void * (*ptr)(int);
        void * handle = (void*) -1;
        ptr = (void *) dlsym(handle, "malloc");
        if (ptr == NULL) {
                printf("Opps\n");
                abort();
        }
        void *alloc = (*ptr)(size);
        printf("Alloc = %p Size: %d\n", alloc, size);
        return alloc;
}

void *realloc(void *alloc, int size) {
        void * (*ptr)(void *, int);
        void * handle = (void*) -1;
        ptr = (void *) dlsym(handle, "malloc");
        if (ptr == NULL) {
                printf("Opps\n");
                abort();
        }
        alloc = (*ptr)(alloc, size);
        printf("Realloc = %p Size: %d\n", alloc, size);
        return alloc;
}

void free(void *alloc) {
        if (alloc == NULL)
                return;
        printf("free %p\n", alloc);
        void * (*ptr)(void *);
        void * handle = (void *) -1;
        ptr = (void *) dlsym(handle, "free");
        if (ptr == NULL)
                abort();

        (*ptr)(alloc);
}

You can compile the above with the following command

gcc -Wall sample.c -fPIC -shared -o libsample.so -lc -ldl

Then set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH= so that it includes the path to the location that the libsample.so is in.

Then set the LD_PRELOAD=libsample.so which will tell the dynamic lib loader to load that library first.

Then you can simply run your program.