With the increasing demand for energy, the construction of underground oil and gas pipelines and electric power facilities has been developing rapidly in China. Due to the limitation of geographical location in space, pipelines and electric power facilities are inevitably laid in parallel, which makes the corrosion problem of buried pipeline caused by stray current become more and more serious. The pipeline corrosion of stray current can be divided into DC interference and AC interference according to the source of interference. Starting from dc stray current and AC stray current respectively, this paper introduces the main source of stray current, formation cause and corrosion hazard. The influence factors of direct current and alternating current are analyzed to understand the corrosion characteristics and corrosion rate difference between them. The mechanism of DC corrosion and AC corrosion is systematically discussed and summarized through the investigation of stray current corrosion, and the reason why the AC corrosion rate lags far behind the DC corrosion rate is analyzed and discussed. The drainage methods and devices for DC and AC stray currents are introduced respectively. The advantages, disadvantages and applicable conditions of each drainage mode are analyzed, which provides a reference for the selection of drainage mode in actual working conditions. At last, the methods to be solved are put forward according to the difficulties of study of stray current corrosion, and the research direction and development prospect of this field are prospected to provide reference for the research in related fields.