Understanding the Windows memory structure

The Windows Operating System (OS) memory structure has a number of sections that can be broken down into high level components. To understand how to write exploits and take advantages of poor programming practices, we first have to understand these sections. The following details break this information down into manageable chunks. The following figure provides a representative diagram of the Windows memory structure for an executable.

Now, each of these components is important, but the pieces we use with most exploit writing are the stack and the heap.

Understanding the stack and the heap

The stack is used for short term local storage in an ordered manner. Each time a function is called, or a thread, a unique stack is assigned of a fixed size for that function or thread. Once the function or thread has finished the operations, the stack is destroyed.

The heap, on the other hand, is where global variables and values are assigned in a relatively disorganized...