On the Identification of Information Extracted from Windows Physical Memory

Forensic investigation of the physical memory of computer systems is gaining the attention of experts in the digital forensics community. Forensic investigators find it helpful to seize and capture data from the physical memory and perform post-incident analysis when identifying potential evidence. However, there have been few investigations which have identified the quantity and quality of information that can be recovered from only the computer system memory (RAM) while the application is still running. In this paper, we present the results of investigations carried out to identify relevant information that has been extracted from the physical memory of computer systems running Windows XP. We found fragments of partial evidence from allocated memory segments. This evidence was dispersed in the physical memory that had been allocated to the application. The identification of this information is useful to forensic investigators as this approach can uncover what a user is doing on the application which can be used as evidence