Taint analysis technology is an important method to protect private data security and realize vulnerability detection, and it is also a hot area of information security research. The research status and development of taint analysis technology in recent years were summarized. The theoretical basis of taint analysis, the basic concepts, key technologies and research progress of static taint analysis and dynamic taint analysis were introduced. From the perspective of the implementation, the implementation methods, core ideas, advantages and disadvantages of four taint analysis technologies based on hardware, software, virtual environment and code were expounded; from the perspective of the flow of taint data, two typical applications in related fields, privacy data leakage detection and vulnerability detection, were outlined. Finally, the shortcomings of taint analysis were briefly analyzed, and the research prospects and development trends of the technology were predicted.