Glossary
Breakpoint
An instruction or hardware trigger in a debugger that pauses execution when the program reaches a specific address or condition.
A breakpoint is a mechanism in a debugger that suspends execution when a specified condition is met. Software breakpoints work by replacing one byte of code at a target address with the INT3 instruction (0xCC); when execution hits it, the CPU raises an exception that the debugger catches. Hardware breakpoints (x86 debug registers DR0–DR3) can trigger on memory reads or writes without modifying code, making them undetectable by integrity-check anti-debug tricks. Conditional breakpoints pause only when an expression evaluates true. Breakpoints are the primary tool for dynamic analysis of specific code paths.