Execute Applications on Remote Systems

Environment: NT4 SP6, Win 2000 SP1, Visual C++ 6.0

Overview

This program allows you to execute applications on remote systems without installing any client software. You can start a command prompt or just execute a command or exe  on a remote machine. The only restriction is you must be an administrator :(

Everybody knows the cool tools from Sysinternals (www.sysinternals.com). One of my favorites are PSEXEC, PSKILL and PSLIST,... :)
I was always wonder how they could query every kind of information or execute commands on a remote machine without installing any client software.

Features

• With this program you can run as many remote commands on the remote machine as you want.  (PSEXEC supports only one remote command on the remote machine at the same time)
• You can execute internal commands (dir,..) directly.
      xCmd.exe \\remote dir
• You can start a light "telnet" connection with a remote machine without any telnet server
      xCmd.exe \\remote cmd

Usage

xCmd v1.0 for NT4/2000 - executes commands remotely
Freeware! 2001 Zoltan Csizmadia, zoltan_csizmadia@yahoo.com

Usage: xCmd.exe \\computer [options] command/exe arguments

Options:
    /D:directory         Set working directory
                         Default: Remote "%SystemRoot%\System32"
    /IDLE                Idle priority class
    /NORMAL              Normal priority class
    /HIGH                High priority class
    /REALTIME            Realtime priority class
    /C                   Copy the specified program to the remote machine's
                         "%SystemRoot%\System32" directory
                         Commands's exe file must be absolute to local machine
    /USER:user           User for remote connection
    /PWD:{password|*}    Password for remote connection
    /NOWAIT              Don't wait for remote process to terminate

Examples:
    xCmd.exe \\remote cmd
    xCmd.exe \\remote /user:administrator dir c:\
    xCmd.exe \\remote /user:somebody /pwd:* /d:d:\ test1.exe /p1 /p2 
    xCmd.exe \\remote /c /user:somebody /pwd:* /d:d:\ test2.exe /whatever

- Input is passed to remote machine when you press the ENTER.
- Ctrl-C terminates the remote process
- Command and file path arguments have to be absolute to remote machine
  If you are using /c option, command exe file path must be absolute to
  local machine, but the arguments must be absolute to remote machine

How does it work?

1. The xCmd.exe is console application and when you start it, the program will extract a xCmdSvc.exe from its resources.
2. xCmd.exe creates a service on the remote machine (that's the reason, you must be an administrator
3. xCmd.exe starts the remote service (#2)
4. xCmd.exe and xCmdSvc.exe will communicate via named pipes
5. xCmd.exe send a packet to the service what to execute
6. xCmdSvc.exe starts the command and redirect stdout, stderr, stdin to 3 named pipes. 
7. xCmd.exe listens these 3 named pipes (#6), redirect them to its stdout, stderr, stdin

Notes

The executable is compiled and linked on Windows 2000 SP1, VC++ 6.0 SP4 and in multithreaded DLL mode.
So if you get some errors, rebuild your executable from the source (xCmd.dsw).

Downloads