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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T09:27:49+00:00

SO_PEERCRED is simple way to get pid/uid/gid of connected AF_UNIX stream socket, SCM_CREDENTIALS is

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SO_PEERCRED is simple way to get pid/uid/gid of connected AF_UNIX stream socket, SCM_CREDENTIALS is more or less the same, but more complex (various ancillary messages). Links to example showing both ways.

  1. Why there are two ways to get more or less the same information?
  2. Why the more comfortable SO_PEERCRED is not listed in unix(7) manpage?
  3. Which is use more in real-life applicatins?

What should I use?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    1. If I understand correctly, there is a subtle difference between the two. SO_PEERCRED retrieves the credentials of the peer process, without requiring any interaction from the peer process. In contrast, SCM_CREDENTIALS is a mechanism to send / receive credentials of the peer process, which are then checked by the kernel. This subtle difference may matter when a process is running as UID 0. SCM_CREDENTIALS allows a process running as UID 0, to declare itself less privileged (e.g., UID 50), whereas this would not be possible with SO_PEERCRED.

    2. See above. I guess using SCM_CREDENTIALS is encouraged and SO_PEERCRED is only supported for compatibility.

    3. The dbus daemon seems to use SO_PEERCRED and getpeereid(). I think it is best to copy their code in order to portably get the credentials.

    http://cgit.freedesktop.org/dbus/dbus/tree/dbus/dbus-sysdeps-unix.c?id=edaa6fe253782dda959d78396b43e9fd71ea77e3

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