Remote Code Execution on Windows Server From a Linux Server

Let's say a Workflow Management Framework of our choice based on the business needs works only on Linux. And let's say our jobs/scripts depend on some libraries that are only compatible with Windows. One of the solutions here could be to host the Workflow Management Framework on a Linux server and execute the jobs on a Windows server via SSH. So the jobs will be triggered on the Linux server and executed on the Windows server.

Paramiko is a Python implementation of the SSH protocol, providing both client and server functionality. It is a Python interface around SSH networking concepts. http://www.paramiko.org/

Let's get started.

Make sure SSH is enabled on both the servers.

ssh <hostname>

Install the Paramiko module on the Linux server.

pip install paramiko

On the Windows server, create a python file (winser_test.py) and add the below sample code.

xxxxxxxxxx

import os

os.system("systeminfo")

On the Linux server, create a python file (linser_test.py) and add the below client code.

xxxxxxxxxx

# import the library

import paramiko

# initialize the ssh client

ssh_client = paramiko.SSHClient()

# enable host auto-add policy 

ssh_client.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())

# connect to windows server

ssh_client.connect(hostname = <hostname>, username = <username>, password = <password>, port = 22)

# execute the script on windows server

stdin, stdout, stderr = ssh_client.exec_command('python <path_to_the_file>winser_test.py')

# print the standard out and error (if any) 

print('stdout -- ', stdout.read())

print('stderr -- ', stderr.read())

Now, execute the linser_test.py script and that will in turn execute the winser_test.py on the Windows server.

Reference: http://docs.paramiko.org/en/stable/