Forensics Tools

Rekall v1.7 – Forensic and Incident Response Framework

October 27, 2017
3 Min Read
The Rekall Framework is a completely open collection of tools, implemented in Python under the Apache and GNU General Public License, for the extraction and analysis of digital artifacts computer systems.
The Rekall distribution is available from: http://www.rekall-forensic.com/
Rekall should run on any platform that supports Python
Rekall supports investigations of the following 32bit and 64bit memory images:
  • Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 and 3
  • Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 0 and 1
  • Microsoft Windows 8 and 8.1
  • Microsoft Windows 10
  • Linux Kernels 2.6.24 to 4.4.
  • OSX 10.7-10.12.x.
Rekall also provides a complete memory sample acquisition capability for all major operating systems (see the tools directory).
Quick start
Rekall is available as a python package installable via the pip package manager. To install it, first create a virtal env, switch to it and then install rekall:

$ virtualenv  /tmp/MyEnv
New python executable in /tmp/MyEnv/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
$ source /tmp/MyEnv/bin/activate
$ pip install --upgrade setuptools pip wheel
$ pip install rekall-agent rekall

For windows, Rekall is also available as a self contained installer package. Please check the download page for the most appropriate installer to use Rekall-Forensic.com
To install from this git repository you will need to use pip –editable and follow the correct order of installation (otherwise pip will pull released dependencies which might be older):

$ virtualenv  /tmp/MyEnv
New python executable in /tmp/MyEnv/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
$ source /tmp/MyEnv/bin/activate
$ pip install --upgrade setuptools pip wheel
$ git clone https://github.com/google/rekall.git rekall
$ pip install --editable rekall/rekall-lib
$ pip install --editable rekall/rekall-core
$ pip install --editable rekall/rekall-agent
$ pip install --editable rekall

On Windows you will need to install the Microsoft Visual C compilers for python (for more info see this blog post http://rekall-forensic.blogspot.ch/2015/09/installing-rekall-on-windows.html)

History
In December 2011, a new branch within the Volatility project was created to explore how to make the code base more modular, improve performance, and increase usability. The modularity allowed Volatility to be used in GRR, making memory analysis a core part of a strategy to enable remote live forensics. As a result, both GRR and Volatility would be able to use each other’s strengths.
Over time this branch has become known as the “scudette” branch or the “Technology Preview” branch. It was always a goal to try to get these changes into the main Volatility code base. But, after two years of ongoing development, the “Technology Preview” was never accepted into the Volatility trunk version.
Since it seemed unlikely these changes would be incorporated in the future, it made sense to develop the Technology Preview branch as a separate project. On December 13, 2013, the former branch was forked to create a new stand-alone project named “Rekall.” This new project incorporates changes made to streamline the codebase so that Rekall can be used as a library. Methods for memory acquisition and other outside contributions have also been included that were not in the Volatility codebase.
Rekall strives to advance the state of the art in memory analysis, implementing the best algorithms currently available and a complete memory acquisition and analysis solution for at least Windows, OSX and Linux.

More documentation
Further documentation is available at http://www.rekall-forensic.com/

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