Hello World Assembly x86-64

Learn how to develop a Windows x86-64 Hello World program in assembly language Fasm the Flat Assembler.

Introduction

"Hello, World!" is one of the simplest computer program, it outputs "Hello, World!" on a display device. It is traditionally used to introduce beginners to a programming language.

During the last years the 32-bit architectures almost disappeared on modern CPUs, it has been replaced by 64-bit ones.

An assembly languages is often used for the optimization of size or performance, it is also necessary to understand it for software reverse engineering.

With a bigger register set, new instructions and a different calling convention, it has become harder to practice manual debugging or reverse engineering on complex x86-64 applications.

The Flat Assembler

The assembly language code in this article is specific to Fasm a language compiler for x86 and x86-64 processor.
You can download this software on the official Fasm website.

Hello world 64-bit

Today we present a simple Windows x64 standalone assembly program that pops up a MessageBox.

The Windows MessageBox Windows function takes four arguments.
MessageBox(HWND hWnd, LPCTSTR lpText, LPCTSTR lpCaption, UINT uType);

In x64 assembly, RCX, RDX, R8, R9 are used for integer and pointer arguments in that order left to right. For an other function, additional arguments would be pushed on the stack.

The following program will use each of the registers seen previously to comply with the MessageBoxA function.

format PE64 GUI

entry start
section '.text' code readable executable

start:
    push rbp
    mov rbp, rsp

    xor rcx, rcx
    lea rdx, [szText]
    lea r8, [szCaption]
    xor r9d, r9d
    call [MessageBoxA]

    xor rax, rax
    leave
    ret

section '.idata' import data readable
dd 0, 0, 0, RVA user32, RVA user_table
dd 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

user_table:
    MessageBoxA dq RVA _MessageBoxA
    dq 0

user32 db 'USER32.DLL', 0

_MessageBoxA dw 0
db 'MessageBoxA', 0

section '.rdata' data readable
szText db 0x77, 0x69, 0x72, 0x65, 0x6d, 0x61, 0x73, 0x6b, 0x00
szCaption db 'Hello, World!', 0

Hello world 32-bit

The "Hello World" program below can run on the 32-bit versions of Windows only.

format PE GUI

entry start
section '.text' code readable executable

start:
    push ebp
    mov ebp, esp

    push 0
    push szCaption
    push szText
    push 0
    call [MessageBoxA]

    xor eax, eax
    leave
    ret

section '.idata' import data readable
dd 0, 0, 0, RVA user32, RVA user_table
dd 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

user_table:
    MessageBoxA dd RVA _MessageBoxA
    dd 0

user32 db 'USER32.DLL', 0

_MessageBoxA dw 0
db 'MessageBoxA', 0

section '.rdata' data readable
szCaption db 0x77, 0x69, 0x72, 0x65, 0x6d, 0x61, 0x73, 0x6b, 0x00
szText db 'Hello, World!', 0
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