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I am reading a book about data architecture, and I am wondering about the text segment and the memory adresses.
In one example(assembly using ARM) where the code was compiled there were adresses to global variables. Does this mean that the executable is always loaded in the same place in the text segment?, so that the adresses of the variables are always the same?
One protection against hacker attacks is “address space randomisation”. Basically code is always loaded to a different address, making it harder to attack. So on a modern device it’s very unlikely to be loaded to a fixed place.
There are two methods to support this: “relocatable code” can be modified at load time to work correctly in the place where it is loaded. “Position independent code” is designed to work correctly no matter where it is loaded.
