Gray Hat Hacking, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

Assembly Language Basics

Though entire books have been written about the ASM language, you can easily grasp a few basics to become a more effective ethical hacker.

Machine vs. Assembly vs. C

Computers only understand machine language—that is, a pattern of 1’s and 0’s. Humans, on the other hand, have trouble interpreting large strings of 1’s and 0’s, so assembly was designed to assist programmers with mnemonics to remember the series of numbers. Later, higher-level languages were designed, such as C and others, which remove humans even further from the 1’s and 0’s. If you want to become a good ethical hacker, you must resist societal trends and get back to basics with assembly.

AT&T vs. NASM

There are two main forms of assembly syntax: AT&T ...