After successfully capturing administrator credentials to a remote Windows machine, a penetration tester attempts to access the system using PSExec but is denied permission. Which of the following…

IPC$ enables named pipe communication but C$ is merely the root drive share and is not the share PSExec targets for service binary deployment.

C$ is the root drive administrative share and is not the deployment target PSExec uses; the tool specifically requires ADMIN$ for writing its service binary.

PSExec works by copying its remote agent executable to the ADMIN$ share (which maps to %SystemRoot%) and then communicating with the Windows Service Control Manager to register and start the deployed service. Without ADMIN$ the binary cannot be placed on the target, and without service management access the agent cannot be executed - both components are necessary for the connection to succeed.

IPC$ provides the named pipe channel for RPC but the combination of ADMIN$ and IPC$ alone omits the service management component that PSExec relies on to install and start its remote agent.