1. A method comprising: scanning a stack of an application for pointers into a machine code of the application; upon identifying in the machine code a pointer to a word associated with a function of the application, locating a byte immediately preceding the word in the machine code; parsing the preceding byte for an instruction; determining, via a processing device, whether the instruction in the preceding byte is a call instruction for the function; when the instruction in the preceding byte is not the call instruction for the function, determining that the word is not a return address for the function, and refraining from including the function in a backtrace of the application; and when the instruction in the preceding byte is the call instruction for the function, determining that the word is the return address for the function, and including the function in the backtrace of the application.