Spawn command line prompt to a remote Windows machine

Question

Is it possible in Win7, Win8.1, Server 2K8 and 2012 to "shadow" or rather spawn a console and 'impersonate' or 'masquerade' a user command line prompt ?

I am domain admin and I would like to interact via command line (DOS, or PowerShell) in a user context without connect via RDP, and without asking for the user password (or password reset).

Example: I am UserA (Domain Admin), on ComputerA. An Employee is UserB on ComputerB. I want to spawn a command line prompt on ComputerA to connect to ComputerB "As UserB" without asking for the employee password:

• PSTools psexec /s \ComputerB allow me to connect as System or myself (but not as user B).
• Bomgar requires to have an agent installed on the target.
• netcat is not convenient either.
• mstsc -console doesn't seem to work

In other terms, what I am trying to achieve is the Windows equivalent of:

computerA ~ Flo  : $ ssh admin@computerB
computerB ~ Admin: $ sudo su UserB
computerB ~ userB: $ 

Answer 1

I don't think that is possible in Windows.

The recommended way to run a remote console in Windows is PowerShell remoting, and when creating a remote session you always have to provide credentials.

It would be actually very bad if an admin could create a user session without knowing the user's password.

Each user has secrets which should not be accessible to administrators, stored passwords and encrypted files via EFS (Encrypted File System).

If you don't know the password, you can not/should not get access to these secrets.

So if you find a way to do this, it would show a major flaw in Windows security.