METHOD FOR DETECTING RACE CONDITIONS INVOLVING HEAP MEMORY ACCESS

A method for detecting race conditions involving heap memory access including a plurality of threads being tracked. At runtime a plurality of APIs utilized to create and destroy thread synchronization objects are intercepted, and each synchronization object created via the APIs is tracked. A bit field is created that contains a unique bit for each synchronization object. Heap memory allocations and deallocations are intercepted and tracked. The heap memory access is intercepted, and at that time, the ID of the accessing thread is compared with the last thread ID associated with that memory block when it was last accessed. If the thread IDs do not match, then the current thread synchronization object bit field is compared with the last synchronization object bit field associated with thread memory block. Provided the bit fields are different, a race condition warning is reported that is displayable to the user having the call chains.