CWE-416: Use After Free

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Also known as Dangling pointer, UAF, Use-After-Free.

A kind of CWE-825 Expired Pointer Dereference.

From the CWE List. © The MITRE Corporation.