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ProphetOfDoom



Joined: 08 Aug 2008
Posts: 120
Location: UK
ProphetOfDoom 11 Jul 2011, 03:30
Hi, why does this code assemble:

Code:
format ELF64

section '.text' executable

add rax, 0x7fffffff
ret
    


But this code doesn't:

Code:
format ELF64

section '.text' executable

add rax, 0x80000000
ret
    


It seems it won't allow any immediate value which has the sign bit set? But why? I read this here http://www.x86-64.org/documentation/assembly.html

Quote:

Immediates

Immediate values inside instructions remain 32 bits and their value is sign extended to 64 bits before calculation. This means that:

addq $1, %rax # Valid instruction
addq $0x7fffffff, %rax # As this
addq $0xffffffffffffffff, %rax # as this one
addq $0xffffffff, %rax # Invalid instruction
addl $0xffffffff, %eax # Valid instruction


But I still don't understand why? Could someone explain please. Thanks in advance.
Post 11 Jul 2011, 03:30
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revolution
When all else fails, read the source


Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 20665
Location: In your JS exploiting you and your system
revolution 11 Jul 2011, 03:39
Immediate values are stored in a signed 32 bit format within the instruction encoding. You can't store 0x0000000080000000 because that would need 33 bits minimum.

You can encode values from 0xffffffff80000000 to 0xffffffffffffffff, and 0x0000000000000000 to 0x000000007fffffff

The sign bit of the 32 bit immediate is copied into the high order 32 bits of the 64 bit number.
Post 11 Jul 2011, 03:39
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ProphetOfDoom



Joined: 08 Aug 2008
Posts: 120
Location: UK
ProphetOfDoom 11 Jul 2011, 04:23
Thanks revolution, I think I get it now. Smile
Post 11 Jul 2011, 04:23
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Madis731



Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 2138
Location: Estonia
Madis731 11 Jul 2011, 07:48
When I didn't understand it, I made a graph on paper to visualize it.
It looked something like:
xxxx...............................yyyy
where xxxx are positive (32-bit) integers and yyyy are negative.
You cannot encode values that are too large or too small. So about -4 billion to +4 billion are okay, but others values should be MOVed to register first or read from memory.
Post 11 Jul 2011, 07:48
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