PCILeech is a security research and memory acquisition tool that uses Direct Memory Access over PCIe to read and write target system memory.
It supports hardware-backed acquisition with devices such as FPGA-based boards and USB3380 hardware, as well as software-based acquisition through the LeechCore library. The software runs on Linux and Windows, and is intended for specialist use in controlled environments such as security research, digital forensics, and red team testing.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports hardware and software-based memory acquisition methods through LeechCore.
- Works with FPGA-based devices, USB3380 hardware, memory dump files, VMware memory, WinPmem, DumpIt, LiveKd, LiveCloudKd, and other sources.
- Can retrieve local and remote memory, including via LeechService and LeechAgent.
- Provides raw PCIe Transaction Layer Packet access with supported FPGA hardware.
- Can mount live RAM and target file systems for analysis on supported systems.
- Includes support for custom kernel shellcode and signatures.
- Documents important limitations around IOMMU, VT-d, virtualization-based security, and modern DMA protections.
Website: github.com/ufrisk/pcileech
Support:
Developer: ufrisk
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
PCILeech is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Forensics Memory Tools | |
|---|---|
| MemProcFS | View physical memory as files in a virtual file system |
| pypykatz | Python implementation of Mimikatz |
| Volatility | Advanced memory forensics framework |
| AVML | Acquire Volatile Memory for Linux |
| Volshell | CLI tool for working with memory |
| EVTXtract | Recovers and reconstructs fragments of EVTX log files |
| yarp | Yet Another Registry Parser |
| AutoTimeliner | Extract forensic timeline from volatile memory dump |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

