Run a Windows command in Perl outside of CGI enviroment

Question

I have a specific proprietary application, which is dual use, running "account.exe" in a CGI context (eg from inside a web server) will make account.exe output a HTML page and such. Running "account.exe" outside of CGI context causes account.exe to enable certain command line functions.

Now to the question: I want to run account.exe outside the CGI context in perl. Have tried with system(1, "command"); have tried with system("start command"), tried with a BAT wrapper that clears (SET VARIABLE=) every enviroment variable that has with CGI to do, but still account.exe "detects" that its run by a web server and outputs its HTML.

How can I run a windows command in a CGI script in perl (using strawberry perl) and making it impossible for the "account.exe" application to detect that the execution originally came from a web server?

Answer 1

There are many ways how account.exe could possibly detect how it was run.

Environment variables is one way; it seems you have already ruled that one out.

Normally processes can see who is their parent and their parent, so that could be other way.

So either you can do a lot of testing until you finally fool the specific technique that the process is using, or you might want to try sandboxing to gain more control on what the process can or cannot see (or do).