No, that is incorrect. That's true if you specify NULL for the lpSecurityAttributes to CreateNamedPipe. I am creating a security attribute structure but the DACL for the security descriptor is NULL - see below SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES saPipeSecurity; PSECURITY_DESCRIPTOR pPipeSD = NULL; // security inits memset ( ( VOID *) &saPipeSecurity, 0, sizeof ( SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES) ); // alloc & init SD if ( ! ( pPipeSD = ( PSECURITY_DESCRIPTOR) ( malloc ( SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR_MIN_LENGTH)) ) ) return FALSE; if ( ! InitializeSecurityDescriptor ( pPipeSD, SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR_REVISION) ) return FALSE; // set NULL DACL on the SD if ( ! SetSecurityDescriptorDacl ( pPipeSD, TRUE, ( PACL) NULL, FALSE) ) return FALSE; // now set up the security attributes saPipeSecurity.nLength = sizeof ( SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES); saPipeSecurity.bInheritHandle = TRUE; saPipeSecurity.lpSecurityDescriptor = pPipeSD; HANDLE hPipe = CreateNamedPipe("\\\\.\\pipe\\PipeTest",PIPE_ACCESS_INBOUND ,PIPE_TYPE_BYTE,PIPE_UNLIMITED_INSTANCES,4086,4086,20000,&saPipeSecurity);
