Patent ID: 8266597

Claim:
A method for dynamically patching a first section of executable computer code of a computer program, comprising: inserting a breakpoint at the first section of executable computer code of the computer program; during execution of the computer program by a processor of a computing device, an instruction counter incrementing on an instruction-by-instruction basis through the computer program, the instruction counter indicating a current instruction of the computer program being executed, the instruction counter incremented by the processor; encountering the breakpoint where the instruction pointer points to the first section of executable computer code, resulting in a breakpoint handler being called, the breakpoint encountered by the processor; the breakpoint handler changing the instruction pointer to instead point to a second section of executable computer code, the second section of executable computer code being a patched version of the first section of executable computer code, the breakpoint handler executed by the processor; and, upon the breakpoint handler returning, the second section of executable computer code being executed by the processor in lieu of the first section of executable computer code, wherein the first section of executable computer code of the computer program is dynamically patched without having to know at time of compiling a location at which the breakpoint is to be added at the first section of executable computer code.