Forensic tools and their usage – a collection of tools I have used or come across, and information on how to use them.

Memory dump

Winpmem (Windows)

avml (Linux)

Volatility

Analyse ramdumps. Volatility 2.6 is no longer maintained, but might have plugins not existing for Volatility 3.

Can be used via docker – perhaps the simplest way:

sudo docker run -v $PWD:/workspace sk4la/volatility3 -f /workspace/ramdump.raw windows.pslist

sudo docker run -v $PWD:/workspace sk4la/volatility -f /workspace/ramdump.raw –profile=Win10x64 pslist

Optimizing for Linux:

$ sudo docker volume create VOL_VOLUME_CACHE
$ sudo docker run -v $PWD:/w -v “VOL_VOLUME_CACHE:/home/unprivileged/.cache/volatility3/:rw” -w /w sk4la/volatility3 -f memorydump.lime -s dir/ –save-config config.json linux.pslist

$ sudo docker run -v $PWD:/w -v “VOL_VOLUME_CACHE:/home/unprivileged/.cache/volatility3/:rw” -w /w sk4la/volatility3 -f memorydump.lime -s dir/ –config config.json linux.pslist

Optimizing for Windows:

sudo docker volume create VOL_VOLUME_CACHE
sudo docker volume create VOL_VOLUME_SYMBOLS_WINDOWS

sudo docker run -v $PWD:/w -v “VOL_VOLUME_CACHE:/home/unprivileged/.cache/volatility3/:rw” -v “VOL_VOLUME_SYMBOLS_WINDOWS:/usr/local/lib/volatility3/volatility3/symbols/windows/ntkrnlmp.pdb/:rw” -w /w sk4la/volatility3 -f memorydump.lime –save-config config.json windows.pslist

sudo docker run -v $PWD:/w -v “VOL_VOLUME_CACHE:/home/unprivileged/.cache/volatility3/:rw” -v “VOL_VOLUME_SYMBOLS_WINDOWS:/usr/local/lib/volatility3/volatility3/symbols/windows/ntkrnlmp.pdb/:rw” -w /w sk4la/volatility3 -f memorydump.lime –config config.json windows.pslist

Usage Vol 2.6 locally:

vol.py -hget help, list plugins
vol.py -f ramdump.raw imageinfofind the type of profile to use for the investigation
vol.py -f ramdump.raw –profile=Win7SP1x86 pslistSpecify the profile found in “imageinfo” and list processes
vol.py -f ramdump.raw –profile=Win7SP1x86 truecryptsummaryIf you have the truecrypt plugins, this will show you info about the use of truecrypt
Volatitility 2.6

MemProcFS

Will mount a memory dump as a file system in Windows.

https://github.com/ufrisk/MemProcFS

Usage:

memprocfs.exe -device memdump.raw mounts the memdump as M:
memprocfs.exe -device memdump.raw -forensic 1Mounts the memdump AND starts forensic mode
MemProcFS

the Sleuthkit

Sleuthkit is a forensic tool suite used to analyse file systems. Some examples of use:

ToolWhat
mmlsLists partition structure of disk or drive
fsstatShow file system information
flslist files in a partition (Forensic ls)
istatinformation about a file. Needs inode number.
icatExtract file by inode number
blklsextract unallocated area of a file system
Sleuthkit

Smaller stand-alone tools

LinkDescription
TZWorks Forensic toolsTools for Windows forensics
https://ericzimmerman.github.io/Windows tools from Eric Zimmerman
https://www.nirsoft.netNirsoft – large amount of freeware tools
https://github.com/getreu/stringsextstrings replacement – with UTF support
https://github.com/tmbinc/bgrepbgrep – binary grep
https://getdataforensics.com/product/fex-imager/FEX Imager
https://github.com/Gadzhovski/TRACE-Forensic-ToolkitTRACE Forensic toolkit – full suite, free and open source

Live Forensics:

https://tclahr.github.io/uac-docs – Unix-like Artifacts Collector

Mac Forensics:

https://github.com/ydkhatri/mac_apt – Tools for automatic analysis of mac artefacts

https://github.com/pstirparo/mac4n6?tab=readme-ov-file