Stack Frames

Because IDA Pro is such a low-level analysis tool, many of its features and displays expect the user to be somewhat familiar with the low-level details of compiled languages, many of which center on the specifics of generating machine language and managing the memory used by a high-level program. Therefore, from time to time this book covers some of the theory of compiled programs in order to make sense of the related IDA displays.

One such low-level concept is that of the stack frame. Stack frames are blocks of memory allocated within a program’s runtime stack and dedicated to a specific invocation of a function. Programmers typically group executable statements into units called functions (also called procedures, subroutines, or ...

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