A computer-implemented method for encoding an application memory that a program, executed on a computer, has access to, using a shadow memory corresponding to the application memory, the method comprises: creating and initializing a shadow memory divided into segments, each segment in the application memory being mapped to a corresponding segment in the shadow memory, for each memory block in the application memory that the program allocates, encoding a corresponding shadow memory block, in the shadow memory, by: defining a meta segment preceding the first segment of the memory block in the application memory, and a corresponding shadow meta segment in the shadow memory block, writing in the shadow meta segment a first value indicative of the size of the memory block, writing, in each subsequent segment of the shadow memory block, a second value indicative of the offset between the segment and the first segment of the shadow memory block.