Extracting self-extracting exe archive via php

I have a problem. I have the service which is giving me .exe file which they claim is in fact zip archive. A self-extracting archive. Problem is that I am downloading that with my app (php) to server and need to extract it there witout downloading to local computer. I have tried download .exe file to local computer - it is self extracting on windows to /temp dir and than self launching FLASH player.

$zip = zip_open($myfile); gives in print_r($zip): 1 zip->open gives no results either. change .exe to .zip doesn't let win开发者_JAVA技巧zip or other kind of un-packer on windows to open it - .exe cannot be opened by winzip too.

Now I have no idea how to deal with it. If anybody can advise please.

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Try to execute the program as an executable with the system command

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Executing files from an external source you don't trust 100% is never a good idea.

The info-zip version of zip allows you to remove the SFX stub from a self-extracting zip file (with the -J flag) converting it back into a normal zip file.

Source code is freely available.

Making a self-extracting zip file is a matter of prepending a zip file with the SFX binary code, then appending the size of the binary stub to the resulting file - but I'm not sure how the data is represented - but a bit of reverse-engineering the available code should make this clear.

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Well... if your PHP server is Windows you shouldn't have a problem doing it as a system command. Otherwise, it's a little more tricky. I hear that the unzip system command will unzip self-extracting zip files, but I don't have access to a Linux box at the moment to try it out.

If you're on shared hosting, chances are you can't do it.

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Well if you think after executing the exe file, it will extract its content, then you can use exec function to run the .exe files like the one below:

exec("d:\\example\\php\_exe\\1436.exe");

and also you can use system function to run external programs as well.

And also if you wonder what's the difference:

PHP - exec() vs system() vs passthru()