Understanding Linux memory acquisition issues
In Chapter 2, Acquisition Process, we discussed general memory dumping issues, which are also relevant in the case of Linux-based systems. However, the process of creating Linux memory dumps also has unique problems that are specific to these systems. These are the problems we will focus on.
The main difficulty that's encountered by professionals when dumping memory is the number of distributions. Since the Linux kernel is open source and distributed under the GNU General Public License, it quickly gained popularity among the community and became the basis for many distributions, each of which has its own features. Naturally, this had an impact on the memory extraction process.
Earlier versions of the kernel, before Linux 2.6, allowed access to memory via /dev/mem and /dev/kmem devices. The /dev/mem interface provided programs with root access to physical memory for read and write operations, while /dev/kmem allowed access to...
