In the previous chapters, we looked at the various types of memory. This included RAM and the swap, or paging, file, which is an area of the hard disk drive which, although slower, functions as RAM. We also discussed the issue of RAM being volatile, meaning that the data in the RAM is easily lost when there is no longer electrical charge or current to the RAM chip. With the data on RAM being the most volatile, it ranks high in the order of volatility and must be forensically acquired and preserved as a matter of high priority.

Many types of data and forensic artifacts reside in RAM and the paging file. As discussed earlier, login passwords, user information, running and hidden processes, and even encrypted passwords are just some of the many types of interesting data that can be found when performing RAM analysis, further compounding the need for memory forensics.

In this chapter, we will look at the very powerful Volatility Framework and its many uses in memory forensics.