Volatility mimikatz plugin

vol.py -f memory.dmp mimikatz

Extract credentials from a memory dump using Volatility's mimikatz plugin to confirm and analyze credential dumping.

Run it during incident response when you have a memory dump from a compromised host (acquired with dumpit, winpmem, or similar): Volatility's mimikatz plugin replicates on the dump what the attacker did live — extracting hashes and plaintext passwords from lsass structures. It serves to confirm which credentials were in memory at the time of compromise (and therefore which ones need to be rotated), to validate the scope of the theft, and for the forensic report. In a credential dumping IR, it's the piece that turns suspicion into evidence: if the attacker dumped lsass, the dump you acquire contains the same thing they stole.

Don't use it on dumps acquired long after the incident: if the host kept running, credentials in memory get refreshed and the dump may not contain those from the time of the attack. It's also not the tool for live detection — for that, use Sysmon/EDR queries; Volatility is post-mortem forensics. And watch out for requirements: the plugin needs the correct system profile (vol.py -f memory.dmp windows.info to identify it) and works best on Windows dumps; on hosts with Credential Guard, protected credentials won't be in the lsass dump in the classic way. On Linux, the equivalent plugin (linux.memdump + analysis) is a different workflow.