A memory dump — a raw snapshot of a computer's RAM at one instant — holds things a disk image never will: processes that were running, network connections that were open, and command history that hadn't been flushed to disk yet. Volatility 3 is the standard framework for parsing that raw memory back into readable structure, and CTF memory-forensics challenges are built almost entirely around its plugin commands.
1. Identify the OS profile
Unlike Volatility 2, version 3 doesn't need a manually-selected profile — it detects the OS and version automatically from the memory image itself. Just point any plugin at the file with -f:
vol -f memdump.raw windows.infowindows.info (or linux.info for a Linux image) confirms Volatility can parse the dump correctly before you run anything more targeted.
2. List running processes
The process list is usually the first real lead — a suspicious or unexpected process name is often the whole point of the challenge:
vol -f memdump.raw windows.pslist
vol -f memdump.raw windows.pstreepstree shows the same processes with their parent-child relationships, which makes it easier to spot something that was spawned by an unusual parent (a script interpreter launched from a document viewer, say).
3. Check network connections
If a process was talking to the network when the memory was captured, that connection is often still resolvable:
vol -f memdump.raw windows.netscanThis surfaces local and remote IPs and ports tied to a specific process ID — useful for tying a suspicious process back to where it was sending data, or for finding a C2 address hidden in the traffic itself.
4. Dump a process or extract a file
Once you've identified a process of interest, pull its memory out for closer inspection — a flag is sometimes sitting in a process's memory space as a plain string, or in a file it had open:
vol -f memdump.raw windows.memmap --pid 1234 --dump
vol -f memdump.raw windows.dumpfiles --pid 1234Run strings on the dumped output the same way you would on any other binary — flags planted in process memory are frequently just sitting there in plaintext.
Wrapping up
Confirm the OS with *.info, list processes with pslist/pstree, check netscan for network activity, then dump anything suspicious for a closer look. That sequence covers most CTF memory forensics challenges without needing to know Volatility's full plugin catalog up front. See the Getting Started with CTF guide for where memory forensics fits among other categories, and writeups for full examples.