x86 Architecture Overview

Prompts and answers

• In which part of the Von Neumann architecture are the code and data required for a program to run stored?
  Memory
• What part of the CPU stores small amounts of data?
  Registers
• In which unit are arithmetic operations performed?
  Arithmetic Logic Unit
• Which register holds the address to the next instruction that is to be executed?
  Instruction Pointer
• Which register in a 32-bit system is also called the Counter Register?
  ECX
• Which registers from the ones discussed above are not present in a 32-bit system?
  R8-R15
• Which flag is used by the program to identify if it is being run in a debugger?
  Trap Flag
• Which flag will be set when the most significant bit in an operation is set to 1?
  Sign Flag
• Which Segment register contains the pointer to the code section in memory?
  Code Segment
• When a program is loaded into Memory, does it have a full view of the system memory? Y or N?
  N
• Which section of the Memory contains the code?
  Code
• Which Memory section contains information related to the program's control flow?
  Stack
• Follow the instructions in the attached static site and find the flag. What is the flag?
  THM{SMASHED_THE_STACK}