Creating and using your own 'heap' manager

Hi,
First of all, I didn't want to write a long title so I've put word heap between apostrophes, simply because in this example we're not creating or managing a heap, but a (zeroed) chunk of  memory which we reserve from the virtual address space of our application. (we'll commit from the reserved chunk as needed)

The differences between a heap and our custom heap are huge.
The only thing that you have to keep in mind for now is that a Heap is divided into Segments each segment contains heap blocks within the committed memory range in which the user/application accessible part resides.
Another thing that I want to mention is that the Windows heap manager keeps track of free blocks using the BEA (back-end-allocator or FreeLists) and the LFH/LAL (low fragmentation heap or lookaside lists).
In addition each block in use by the application or that is in the LAL is considered busy (A Flag withing each block describes its status) and each block within a free list is considered Free.
Maybe I'll write a detailed post soon about Windows Heap Management.

Back to our topic : I spent much time in the previous months trying to understand the concepts behind the Windows Heap Manager and also some of its exploitation techniques. Thus, I also added a small security check in the custom manager that does safe unlinking from the FreeList.
Our custom manager will clone only a small part of Windows heap management which is implementing a circular FreeList structure and will also use a singly linked list to keep track of all allocated and free blocks. I programmed it so no new portions will be committed from reserved memory until there are no free blocks to allocate from.
You will be able also to display details about the MAP (singly linked list) and the FreeList used while allocating and freeing to see the changes.

Full commented C++ source here : http://pastebin.com/2LgcByyC

Execution example :
I've allocated some blocks then freed some of them and displayed the map :

And after that displayed the FreeList :

 

P.S : 0x002A4D10 is the FreeList's head.

You can play with allocations and frees as you like then display details :)

See you soon,

Souhail Hammou. @Dark_Puzzle .