Volatility

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

4357 stars · 696 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Volatility is an open-source memory forensics framework for extracting digital artifacts from RAM captures of Windows, Linux, and macOS systems. Volatility 3 is the actively developed Python rewrite, while the original Volatility 2 codebase is archived.

Use cases

• analyze a memory dump for malware
• extract running processes from a RAM capture
• investigate a compromised Windows machine from a memory image
• find injected code in volatile memory
• perform incident response forensics on a memory sample
• recover network connections and credentials from RAM

When to choose

• you need to analyze RAM captures from Windows, Linux, or macOS systems
• you want the de facto standard, extensible memory forensics platform used by investigators
• you need plugin-based malware and artifact extraction from memory images

When to avoid

• you only need disk or file-system forensics rather than volatile memory analysis
• you need a GUI-driven point-and-click forensics suite
• you require long-term support of the legacy Volatility 2 codebase, which is archived

Facets

framework · maturity active

security cli parser developer-tools security reverse-engineering operating-systems developer-tools python windows cli cross-platform memory-forensics ram-analysis incident-response malware-analysis digital-forensics volatility dfir forensics linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="volatilityfoundation/volatility3")