Volatility (software)


Volatility is an open-source memory forensics framework for incident response and malware analysis. It is written in Python and supports Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Volatility was created by Aaron Walters, drawing on academic research he did in memory forensics.

Operating system support

Volatility supports investigations of the following memory images:
Windows:
Mac OSX:
  • 32-bit 10.5.x Leopard
  • 32-bit 10.6.x Snow Leopard
  • 32-bit 10.7.x Lion
  • 64-bit 10.6.x Snow Leopard
  • 64-bit 10.7.x Lion
  • 64-bit 10.8.x Mountain Lion
  • 64-bit 10.9.x Mavericks
  • 64-bit 10.10.x Yosemite
  • 64-bit 10.11.x El Capitan
  • 64-bit 10.12.x Sierra
  • 64-bit 10.13.x High Sierra
  • 64-bit 10.14.x Mojave
  • 64-bit 10.15.x Catalina
Linux:
  • 32-bit Linux kernels 2.6.11 to 5.5
  • 64-bit Linux kernels 2.6.11 to 5.5
  • OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, etc.

    Memory format support

Volatility supports a variety of sample file formats and the ability to convert between these formats:
  • Raw/Padded Physical Memory
  • Firewire
  • Expert Witness
  • 32- and 64-bit Windows Crash Dump
  • 32- and 64-bit Windows Hibernation
  • 32- and 64-bit Mach-O files
  • Virtualbox Core Dumps
  • VMware Saved State and Snapshot
  • HPAK Format
  • QEMU memory dumps
  • LiME format