Re: Smashing the Stack?

[Kim Reece <sorel () ugcs caltech edu>]

> That article is from 1996. About that time 16bit machines were state of
> the art. Nowadays, we work on 32bit systems. Along with doubling the
> bits, the alignment of variables in memory changed too. From 4Byte to
> 8...
>
> At least that's what I'd think it is... Correct me if I'm wrong.
> (last messed with c/asm a year ago :-) )

If i recall correctly, the purpose of 4-byte allignment is to extend the
range for some of the intel addressing modes.  The end result at the
how-bits-fit-in-the-instruction level was that the last two bits could be
implicit in these addresses, which expanded the range by a factor of 4.
This aspect of the instruction format has not been changed in their 32 bit
architectures, therefore i see no reason why they would have moved to
8-byte allignment.  Then again, my computer architecture class could have
had totally wrong specs for the pentiums, anything is possible.