Dynatrace Corporation

Gernot Reisinger

Thomas Koeckerbauer

Ernst Ambichl

Michael Obermueller

A system and method is disclosed for injecting in-process agents into processes executing self-contained, statically linked binaries that do not interact with a dynamic loader mechanism that identifies and resolves required libraries at run time. System calls directed to the execution of binaries in processes are intercepted and the targeted binary is analyzed to determine whether it is statically linked. In case a statically linked binary is identified, a proxy launcher process is started instead of the binary which starts the original binary as traceable child process. After the child process has loaded the original binary into its process memory, the memory image of the child process is copied to the launcher process and the child process is terminated. An agent is loaded into the launcher process to instruments the copied memory image. After the instrumentation is finished, the original start conditions for the statically linked binary are reconstructed and the entry function of the instrumented statically linked binary is called to execute the binary.

Automatic injection of agents into processes executing statically linked binaries

A system and method is presented that installs an agent on a computer system that monitors the start of processes by the computer system and that identifies the start of processes that perform container management activities, like starting and stopping container environments. On start of a container manager process, the agent starts a container manager agent that establishes a monitoring connection to the container manager process. The container manager agent monitors activities performed by the container manager process to detect the start of new container environments by the container manager process. On detection of a container start, the container manager agent manipulates the container configuration in a way that a process type specific in-process agent is automatically injected into processes started inside the container.

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Linz, Austria

Gernot Reisinger