WCU / Cybersecurity
~/CSC 472/Class 02/KP 16
Class 02 · KP 16 / 23

Little-Endian: Bytes Are Stored Backwards

  • x86-64 is little-endian: the least-significant byte is stored at the lowest address.
  • The 8-byte value 0x0000555555555189 is stored in memory as:
Key Takeaway

When you write an address into an exploit payload, the bytes must be in little-endian order. Doing this by hand is error-prone — use a helper.