Sorry to be blunt, that C/C++ code is crustyyy. Just to start with run this through an decently complete clang-tidy profile and fix all errors and warnings. That should become part of your build. The longer you hold out on that the harder it will be. Your code has no provisions to handle fuzzed/corrupted content. Maybe a better idea would be to switch this entire code base over to Rust.
Consider modern C++ practices as outlined here: https://github.com/cpp-best-practices/cppbestpractices/blob/...