Is it possible to run an exe file on a host computer via a website? [closed]

Question

Is it possible to run an .exe file from the host computer? For example, someone enters my website and it starts to run "mspaint.exe" on the website itself (people will see MS Paint and be able to use it). So, nothing is opened or running on the client side - only server side.

I tried searching for this, but I only get answers regarding opening a local exe file with a website.

thanks, g3mini :D

Answer 1

If you want to access the remote desktop application via the web browser you will need a HTML5 VNC client. A popular one is Gaucamole @ http://guac-dev.org/. It can be configured to view only a single application instead of the remote desktop.

If you want the website to work as a trigger for remote applications and want the remote applications to work like they are being run on the client machine. This can be done over Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). I have seen this work flawlessly, but it requires a ton of work.

Answer 2

If I were to do this, I would have a set of VMs that run the software your clients would see. Then, you can use one of the many web-based VNC clients available which could connect either directly to the VM, or via proxy.

The benefit of this approach is that after every user session, you can roll back the state of the VM to the way you configured it. It also completely separates your code and what not from where the user is working with the remote software.

Answer 3

Somewhat, And I say that very losely... You will basically need to run the application inside a shell. Something like Xenocode is what you can use to accomplish this.