Understanding reversing C prog. in assembly - disassembly

Question

I have just started learning reverse engineering (self study). I know assembly upto some understandable point. Basic instructions that pop up after disasassembling the C code are almost understandable to me (like- what does each instruction mean). Since it is beginning, somebody might feel these like dumb questions, and can plz suggest some good e-book on basics of reversing, so that i could stop asking noob questions. Well, the query is:-
Here is a simple C code
#include<stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf("hello world");
}
and followed is the disassembled code of main.
0x004013b0 <+0>: push %ebp //saves ebp to stack
0x004013b1 <+1>: mov %esp,%ebp //saves esp onto ebp
0x004013b3 <+3>: and $0xfffffff0,%esp //alignong the stack
0x004013b6 <+6>: sub $0x10,%esp //creating 16 bytes on stack
0x004013b9 <+9>: call 0x401980 <__main> //main call
0x004013be <+14>: movl $0x403064,(%esp) ?? what is it exactly doing??
0x004013c5 <+21>: call 0x401bf0 <printf> //print call
0x004013ca <+26>: leave
0x004013cb <+27>: ret
Here i couldn't understand what it is doing (although it seems like the contents in 0x403064 is copied in stack at esp)- movl $0x403064,(%esp)
In this assembly code I need to know where is "hello world" stored?
Also if somebody could suggest me some good readings in order to learn reversing from basics. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

printf awaits its parameters in this case on the stack. The address where your string is stored in the memory is $0x403064. So you can see the instruction
movl $0x403064,(%esp)
copies this address on the stack (please note the braces around esp).
To be honest, this is not the usual way. But your program is so simple and therefore the compiler does some micro optimization. This helps to skip some machine instructions. In general one would use some kind of combination of lea and push instructions to copy the address to the stack and later after the call (in the cdecl calling convention which we have here) it is usual to use an add instruction to correct theesp afterwards.
EDIT:
Following a debugging sessien with gdb, im using the command x/sb 0x403064 to show the string in memory.
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.5
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i686-pc-mingw32".
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>...
Reading symbols from d:\temp\C++11\test.exe...(no debugging symbols found)...don
e.
(gdb) start
Temporary breakpoint 1 at 0x4013b3
Starting program: d:\temp\C++11\test.exe
[New Thread 5348.0x16f4]
Temporary breakpoint 1, 0x004013b3 in main ()
(gdb) disassemble $eip
Dump of assembler code for function main:
0x004013b0 <+0>: push %ebp
0x004013b1 <+1>: mov %esp,%ebp
=> 0x004013b3 <+3>: and $0xfffffff0,%esp
0x004013b6 <+6>: sub $0x10,%esp
0x004013b9 <+9>: call 0x401990 <__main>
0x004013be <+14>: movl $0x403064,(%esp)
0x004013c5 <+21>: call 0x401c10 <printf>
0x004013ca <+26>: mov $0x0,%eax
0x004013cf <+31>: leave
0x004013d0 <+32>: ret
0x004013d1 <+33>: nop
0x004013d2 <+34>: nop
0x004013d3 <+35>: nop
0x004013d4 <+36>: add %al,(%eax)
0x004013d6 <+38>: add %al,(%eax)
0x004013d8 <+40>: add %al,(%eax)
0x004013da <+42>: add %al,(%eax)
0x004013dc <+44>: add %al,(%eax)
0x004013de <+46>: add %al,(%eax)
End of assembler dump.
(gdb) x/sb 0x403064
0x403064 <_Jv_RegisterClasses+4206692>: "hello world"
(gdb) x/12xb 0x403064
0x403064 <_Jv_RegisterClasses+4206692>: 0x68 0x65 0x6c 0x6c 0x6f
0x20 0x77 0x6f
0x40306c <_Jv_RegisterClasses+4206700>: 0x72 0x6c 0x64 0x00
(gdb)