What Volatility Plugin Will Dump a Process to an Executable File Sample? A Complete DFIR Guide

Title: What Volatility Plugin Will Dump a Process to an Executable File Sample? A Complete DFIR Guide

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In digital forensics and incident response (DFIR), memory forensics plays a crucial role in understanding what malicious activity may have occurred on a system. One of the most powerful open-source tools in this area is Volatility, a memory forensics framework that allows investigators to analyze volatile memory (RAM) dumps for malware, live processes, network connections, and more.

A common task during malware analysis is to extract—or dump—a running process from memory into an executable file for further static and dynamic analysis.

This blog post will guide you through the Volatility plugin responsible for dumping processes, explain how it works, and how to use it effectively with practical examples.

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Table of Contents

1. What Is Volatility?
2. Why Dump a Process from Memory?
3. Which Plugin Dumps a Process in Volatility?
4. How to Use procdump Plugin (Step-by-Step)
5. Other Related Volatility Plugins
6. Working with Dumped Executables
7. Common Pitfalls and Troubleshooting
8. FAQs
9. Further Resources and Tools

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What Is Volatility?

Volatility is a Python-based memory forensics framework that supports analyzing RAM dumps from various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS.

It allows DFIR professionals to:

• List processes and drivers
• Analyze network connections
• Detect hidden or injected code
• Recover artifacts like DLLs, registry keys, clipboard data, and executable binaries

🔗 Official Site: https://www.volatilityfoundation.org/

There are two major versions:

• Volatility 2.x: Older, widely used, supports Windows memory dumps in raw or crash formats.
• Volatility 3: Modular, supports multiple OS formats, actively maintained.

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Why Dump a Process from Memory?

Dumping a process is essential for:

Reason	Explanation
🔍 Malware Analysis	Extracting malicious payloads running in memory for sandbox testing
🧪 Reverse Engineering	Allows binary analysis in tools like IDA Pro, Ghidra, or x64dbg
📉 Persistence Detection	Identify suspicious injected or hidden processes
🛡️ Threat Hunting	Cross-check hash of executables against threat intel databases like VirusTotal
🔬 Volatile Evidence Preservation	Ensure forensic accuracy by preserving what was truly running

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Which Plugin Dumps a Process in Volatility?

The plugin you are looking for is procdump.

✅ procdump is the Volatility plugin used to dump process memory to an executable (.exe) file, based on its Process ID (PID).

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How to Use procdump Plugin (Step-by-Step)

🛠️ Requirements

Before you proceed, make sure you have:

• A memory image (e.g., .raw, .mem, .lime)
• Installed Volatility 2.x or Volatility 3
• Determined the correct OS profile (for Volatility 2.x)

If you’re unsure of the profile, run:
volatility -f memdump.raw imageinfo

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✅ Step-by-Step with Volatility 2.x

1. Identify the Running Processes

volatility -f memdump.raw --profile=Win7SP1x64 pslist

Sample Output:

Offset	Name	PID	PPID
0x1a0	explorer.exe	1234	456
0x2b0	svchost.exe	5678	432

2. Dump the Process

Use the PID you found in pslist.

volatility -f memdump.raw --profile=Win7SP1x64 procdump -p 1234 -D output/

Explanation of flags:

Flag	Description
-p	Specifies the Process ID (PID) to dump
-D	Destination folder for dumped executable

After successful execution, you’ll find an .exe file like this:

output/proc.1234.exe

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🧪 Step-by-Step with Volatility 3

Volatility 3 has a new command structure. First, verify it’s working:

vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.info

Then dump a process like so:

vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.pslist

Identify the PID and use:

vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.dlllist.DllList
vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.memmap.Memmap
vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.dumpfiles.DumpFiles --pid 1234

In Volatility 3, the procdump plugin has been modularized into memory-mapping and file-dumping plugins.

For full binary extraction, use:

vol.py -f memdump.raw windows.dumpfiles.DumpFiles --pid 1234 --dump

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Other Related Volatility Plugins

Here are some additional Volatility plugins related to process dumping and analysis:

Plugin	Description
malfind	Detects hidden or injected code in memory
dlllist	Lists loaded DLLs of a process
handles	Shows open handles (files, registry, etc.)
memdump	Dumps raw memory pages of a process (not executable format)
apihooks	Detects inline and IAT hooking
cmdscan	Retrieves command-line history from memory

Use these together to perform in-depth malware triage.

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Working with Dumped Executables

Once you extract the .exe file using procdump, you can:

• Upload it to VirusTotal to check for known signatures: https://www.virustotal.com
• Open in Ghidra or IDA Pro for static analysis
• Run it in a sandbox (like Cuckoo or Any.Run) to see runtime behavior
• Use PEStudio or Detect-It-Easy to inspect headers, imports, and PE structure

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Common Pitfalls and Troubleshooting

Issue	Cause	Solution
No suitable profile found	Incorrect profile used	Run imageinfo to detect correct profile
Dumped file not executable	Used memdump instead of procdump	Always use procdump for PE files
Errors in Volatility 3	Misunderstanding module structure	Use updated plugin names and check docs
Missing symbols or dependencies	Incomplete dump	Use dlllist to check loaded libraries
File is too small or incomplete	Corrupted RAM image	Ensure image was captured fully and correctly

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FAQs

Q: What is the difference between procdump and memdump?

• procdump extracts the process in a way that produces a usable .exe file.
• memdump simply dumps the raw memory used by the process, which may not be in a loadable format.

Q: Can I dump multiple processes at once?

Yes. You can loop through PIDs in a script, or use pslist + xargs.

Example:

for pid in $(volatility -f mem.raw --profile=Win7SP1x64 pslist | awk '{print $3}' | grep -E '^[0-9]+$'); do
  volatility -f mem.raw --profile=Win7SP1x64 procdump -p $pid -D dumps/
done

Q: Are dumped processes safe to open?

No. Always open them in an isolated sandbox or VM. Malware in memory can still be dangerous when extracted.

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Further Resources and Tools

• 🔗 Volatility 2 GitHub
• 🔗 Volatility 3 GitHub
• 🛡️ PEStudio for binary inspection
• 🔍 IDA Freeware by Hex-Rays
• 🧪 Cuckoo Sandbox for malware testing
• 📦 Ghidra reverse engineering suite

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Summary

To dump a process to an executable file sample in Volatility, the plugin you need is:

✅ procdump (in Volatility 2.x)
✅ windows.dumpfiles.DumpFiles (in Volatility 3)

Using these tools, you can extract binaries from RAM for further malware analysis and investigation. This is a foundational skill in DFIR and can reveal critical evidence that static disk analysis might miss.

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Hashtags:
#Volatility #MemoryForensics #DFIR #MalwareAnalysis #procdump #CyberSecurity #DigitalForensics #Volatility3 #ExecutableDump #RAMAnalysis

Tags: volatility procdump plugin, dump process executable memory, extract exe from RAM, volatility malware analysis, DFIR tools, procdump tutorial

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