/C-Remote-Windows-Cross-Compiler

Manual script that copies c program files from my local MacOS machine to a remote Windows VM I control, providing native compilation work before passing back to the source MacOS system.

Primary LanguageShell

Remote C Windows Host Compiler

This script is designed to compile C code on a remote Windows host. It copies the source code from the local MacOS machine to the remote Windows host, compiles it using GCC, then copies the resulting executable back to the local MacOS machine. The script also cleans up after itself by removing the source and executable files from the remote host upon successful completion. The script also produces a general packed version of the resulting executable so as to have a comparison in disassembly. These steps are taken to administer my personal learning in reverse engineering simple c programs written against Windows Endpoints and to allow simple program creation/building/testing all using Radare2 on my local preferred OS choice, MacOS.

Prerequisites

  • The local system needs to have bash, scp, ssh, and sshpass installed and in the system PATH.
  • The remote Windows host needs to have a compatible SSH and SCP server running (such as OpenSSH) and gcc installed.
  • You should have SSH access to the Windows machine.

Installation

  1. Save the script to a file, for example windows_build, in /usr/local/bin directory to make it accessible from any directory:

    sudo mv windows_build /usr/local/bin/

  2. Make the script executable:

    sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/windows_build

Now you can run windows_build from any directory on your system.

Usage

  1. Make sure you have bash, scp, ssh, and sshpass installed on your local machine.

  2. Ensure that gcc is installed on the Windows machine and that you have SSH access to that machine.

  3. Run the script with the source file as an argument:

    windows_build source_file.c

    Replace source_file.c with the path to the source file you want to compile.

    usage_image

  4. If you haven't already, you will be prompted to enter the remote Windows build user and host. You can set these permanently by adding the following commands into your local MacOS user .profile file:

    export WINDOWS_BUILD_USER=your_username
export WINDOWS_BUILD_HOST=your_host

    Replace your_username with your username and your_host with the host name or IP address of the Windows machine and then be sure to source the .profile file again to update your local environment.

    source ~/.profile

  5. If no SSH key is found, you will be prompted to enter your password for the remote host.

Upon successful execution, the script will compile the source code on the remote host and copy the resulting executable back to the local machine.

Please remember to test this script in a controlled environment before using it in a production setting.

Known Limitations

  • The script assumes that the user has the necessary permissions to delete files in the specified directories on the remote Windows host.
  • It does not handle cases where the files do not exist on the remote host when the deletion attempt is made.