Start up: in the kernel

• ELF is structured and comprised of several regions: executable (but not normally writable), writable and not used in run time (and therefore not loaded by the kernel).

• The kernel loads the ELF headers, which points to the ELF Program Header which describes the various regions and their permissions.

• The kernel will read the table, mmap the regions and will assign their access permissions according to the permissions in the table.