Note that despite the headline, the feature actually used here is kprobe and uprobe (which use eBPF to collect data using eBPF every time an event, such as passing a certain point in code, is executed - allowing for hooking of functions and extraction of data). You can turn them off with CONFIG_KPROBE_EVENTS=n and CONFIG_UPROBE_EVENTS=n.

That said, there are other ways to do similar probing: - Loading kernel modules. - Using ptrace. - Using LD_PRELOAD against a dynamic binary.