Why C Has Always Broken Static Analysis
Blog post from Endor Labs
C and C++ remain essential for systems requiring direct hardware access and deterministic timing, but their prevalence of memory-safety vulnerabilities has persisted despite extensive use of static analysis, with such flaws accounting for a large share of critical bugs in major platforms. The passage argues that static analysis struggles because preprocessing creates many configuration-specific versions of code, pointer aliasing and manual memory management complicate dataflow tracking, critical defects depend on interprocedural reasoning about bounds and lifetimes rather than simple patterns, and each codebase uses unique frameworks and ownership conventions that generic tools cannot easily model. It notes that modern C++ features can reduce some risks but do not eliminate shared analysis challenges or legacy C-style practices. AI coding assistants may intensify these longstanding problems by producing memory-corruption bugs at higher rates than human developers while appearing similarly safe to static scanners, with runtime tools finding issues that static-only CI can miss. Existing tools trade off build-dependent accuracy against developer-friendly but noisier scanning, and the passage concludes by advocating source-level, memory-aware analysis that operates quickly enough for AI-assisted development, highlighting Endor Labs’ C support as an example.
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