Memory Collection and Analysis

As a follow-on to my previous post regarding OMFW, there have been some developments in the area of memory dumping and parsing (ie, collection and analysis) that have occurred over the past couple of months.

Lance Mueller posted on the new standalone memory dumping tool that is part of EnCase 6.11. Interesting tool as it apparently dumps the contents of physical memory from Windows (Windows 2000 through Vista) to an EnCase .E0x file format, for inclusion in a case. According to the documentation, there's functionality to extract that memory dump from the .E0x file format to something usable by HBGary's Responder product. Note: Initial testing indicates that FTK Imager will successfully convert the resulting .E0x files to a dd-style format for use with other tools.

Jesse Kornblum referred mdd to me. This one looks promising...captures memory from Windows versions through Vista and 2008. Jesse posted some clarifications about this tool on his blog. As it stands, this appears to be the first free tool to dump RAM from Windows 2000 through 2008, inclusive, in a dd-style format. Note: Updated version 1.1 was released on 17 June.

So available tools for collecting the contents of physical memory are becoming more available. From an analysis standpoint, I really think that you want to keep your eyes on the guys over at Volatility Systems, though.

Addendum: win32dd is available from Matthieu Suiche. I just found out about this so I haven't had an opportunity to try it...but I am looking forward to adding it to the list of tools to test!

Andreas blogs on the new tools...great stuff, very comprehensive view of where this all stands at the moment.