Analyzing Heap Spray Exploitation

SkillDocs & knowledge

Lets your agent detect and analyze heap spray attacks in memory dumps using Volatility3.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

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Then ask your AI: use the Analyzing Heap Spray Exploitation skill

About this capability

Detect and analyze heap spray attacks in memory dumps using Volatility3

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by mukul975/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills in skills/analyzing-heap-spray-exploitation/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

Overview

Heap spraying is an exploitation technique that fills large regions of a process's heap with attacker-controlled data (typically NOP sleds followed by shellcode) to increase the reliability of code execution exploits. This skill covers detecting heap spray artifacts in memory dumps using Volatility3's malfind, vadinfo, and memmap plugins, identifying suspicious contiguous memory allocations, scanning for NOP sled patterns (0x90, 0x0c0c0c0c), and extracting embedded shellcode for analysis.

When to Use

  • When investigating security incidents that require analyzing heap spray exploitation
  • When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
  • When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
  • When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.9+ with volatility3 framework installed
  • Memory dump file (.raw, .vmem, .dmp format)
  • Understanding of virtual memory layout and VAD (Virtual Address Descriptor) trees
  • Familiarity with common shellcode patterns and NOP sled encodings

Steps

Step 1: Identify Suspicious Processes

Use Volatility3 windows.malfind to scan for processes with executable injected memory regions.

Step 2: Analyze VAD Entries

Examine VAD tree entries using windows.vadinfo for large contiguous allocations with RWX permissions.

Step 3: Scan for NOP Sled Patterns

Search suspicious memory regions for NOP sled signatures (0x90 sequences, 0x0c0c0c0c patterns).

Step 4: Extract and Analyze Shellcode

Dump suspicious memory regions and identify shellcode using byte pattern analysis.

Expected Output

JSON report with suspicious processes, heap spray indicators, NOP sled locations, memory region sizes, and extracted shellcode hashes.

Signals

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Last commit
Aug 2026
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skill
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analyzing-heap-spray-exploitation-mukul975
Source
github.com/mukul975/anthropic-cybersecurity-skills