Which commands would you run on Windows to display local users and groups and identify administrators?

• A. net user; net localgroup; net localgroup administrators; to display not only local user info, but also list what groups are on the machines and what users belong to those groups.
• B. arp -a; route print; tracert; ipconfig
• C. nslookup; ping; netstat -an; ipconfig
• D. tasklist; process explorer; whoami; net accounts

Answer: (A)

The essential idea is to enumerate local accounts and determine who has administrative privileges on the Windows machine. To achieve this, you use built-in Windows commands that reveal local user accounts and the membership of local groups.

Using a command to list local users gives you the full set of accounts that exist on the machine. Then listing local groups shows you how those accounts are organized into groups. Finally, listing the members of the Administrators group directly identifies which accounts have elevated rights on the system. Put together, net user (to show users), net localgroup (to show groups and their memberships), and net localgroup administrators (to see who belongs to the Administrators group) provide a complete view of local admin access.

The other sets of commands focus on network configuration or process information rather than account and group information. They won’t reveal local user accounts or which users have administrative privileges, so they’re not suitable for this purpose.