Why Am I Getting a Huge Assembly Dump from a Simple Hello World Program?

I just started reverse engineering, so I'm sorry if this is question appears clueless. I did a test run of IDA Freeware 7.0 against a Hello World program that I compiled into a PE executable using the Open Watcom C compiler. For some reason when I disassembled my test program I got an assembly dump that was thousands of lines long and had close to 100 subroutines. What exactly is going on here? Why am I getting all this assembly code from a four-line C program?

2 Responses

Gee, I don't know. If only you had actually included, say, the assembly you see, or a link to the program in question, or literally anything that we could draw conclusions from. There are literally endless reasons this could happen. Maybe your compiler is shit (I for one have never heard of Open Watcom, for example). Maybe IDA is tripping over itself (the freeware is shit for IDA, those strong-arming hypocrites). Maybe you are analyzing the wrong fucking program. I don't know - how could I know? There's no details here! You want something from someone else when you make these requests, so DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO MAKE OUR JOBS EASY. I can't help you until you actually give us a pastebin link with the assembly, or a link to download the file, or whatever; and neither can anyone else. Get back to me when you have something I can work with.

its because you include things with #include like your library to create input output

those libraries have a lot of stuff in them thats why. #include just copies the contents of the file so its just like copy paste

Share Your Thoughts

Our Best Hacking & Security Guides

New Null Byte posts — delivered straight to your inbox.

2 Responses

Share Your Thoughts