Use After Free
CWE-416
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 Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory belongs to the code that operates on the new pointer.
We track 4,465 vulnerabilities of this type. 100% are rated high or critical, and the average CVSS score is 8.3. 109 have been exploited in real attacks.
How this weakness is prevented
- Architecture and Design: Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
- Implementation: When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy.
Latest Use After Free vulnerabilities
- 9.0 Critical severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Bluetooth in Google Chrome on Mac prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed an attacker who convinced a user to install a malicious extension to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted Chrome Extension. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in ANGLE in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 8.3 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in ANGLE in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 9.6 Critical severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in WebGL in Google Chrome on Android prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 9.6 Critical severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Dawn in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Network in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in DOM in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.3 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in WebMIDI in Google Chrome on Android prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in WebCodecs in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.3 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Skia in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in SVG in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code inside a sandbox via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 7.5 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in WebAppInstalls in Google Chrome on Mac prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who convinced a user to engage in specific UI gestures to execute arbitrary code via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 7.5 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Views in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who convinced a user to engage in specific UI gestures to execute arbitrary code via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.8 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in PDFium in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker to potentially exploit heap corruption via a crafted PDF file. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.3 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in PerformanceManager in Google Chrome prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 8.3 High severity
Chrome: Use After Free
Use after free in Passwords in Google Chrome on Windows prior to 148.0.7778.216 allowed a remote attacker who had compromised the renderer process to potentially perform a sandbox escape via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: High)
- 7.8 High severity
Ubuntu Linux: Use After Free
Ubuntu Linux 6.8 contains AppArmor SAUCE patches which fail to acquire a lock when modifying a linked list. An unprivileged local user could trigger the race condition that can lead to a use-after-free (UAF) and, theoretically, arbitrary code execution.
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: spi: mpc52xx: fix use-after-free on registration failure Make sure to disable and free the interrupts in case controller registration fails to avoid a potential use-after-free and resource lea
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: media: iris: Fix use-after-free in iris_release_internal_buffers() The recent change in commit 1dabf00ee206 ("media: iris: gen1: Destroy internal buffers after FW releases") introduced a regre
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sctp: revalidate list cursor after sctp_sendmsg_to_asoc() in SCTP_SENDALL The SCTP_SENDALL path in sctp_sendmsg() iterates ep->asocs with list_for_each_entry_safe(), which caches the next entr
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: spi: mpc52xx: fix use-after-free on unbind The state machine work is scheduled by the interrupt handler and therefore needs to be cancelled after disabling interrupts to avoid a potential use-
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm: Set old handle to NULL before prime swap in change_handle There was a potential race condition in change_handle. The ioctl briefly had a single object with two idr entries; a concurrent g
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: HID: appletb-kbd: fix UAF in inactivity-timer cleanup path Commit 38224c472a03 ("HID: appletb-kbd: fix slab use-after-free bug in appletb_kbd_probe") added timer_delete_sync(&kbd->inactivity_t
- 8.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: batman-adv: bla: prevent use-after-free when deleting claims When batadv_bla_del_backbone_claims() removes all claims for a backbone, it does this by dropping the link entry in the hash list.
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: media: iris: fix use-after-free of fmt_src during MBPF check During concurrency testing, multiple instances can run in parallel, and each instance uses its own inst->lock while the core->lock
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: brcmfmac: Fix potential use-after-free issue when stopping watchdog task Watchdog task might end between send_sig() and kthread_stop() calls, what results in the use-after-free issue. Fi
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Out-of-bounds Write
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exit: prevent preemption of oopsing TASK_DEAD task When an already-exiting task oopses, make_task_dead() currently calls do_task_dead() with preemption enabled. That is forbidden: do_task_dead
- 8.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: use safe list iteration in radar detect work The call to ieee80211_dfs_cac_cancel can cause the iterated chanctx to be freed and removed from the list. Guard against this to av
- 7.0 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched_ext: Read scx_root under scx_cgroup_ops_rwsem in cgroup setters scx_group_set_{weight,idle,bandwidth}() cache scx_root before acquiring scx_cgroup_ops_rwsem, so the pointer can be stale
- 8.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: mac80211: remove station if connection prep fails If connection preparation fails for MLO connections, then the interface is completely reset to non-MLD. In this case, we must not keep t
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/damon/sysfs-schemes: protect memcg_path kfree() with damon_sysfs_lock Patch series "mm/damon/sysfs-schemes: fix use-after-free for [memcg_]path". Reads of 'memcg_path' and 'path' files in D
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ip6_gre: Use cached t->net in ip6erspan_changelink(). After commit 5e72ce3e3980 ("net: ipv6: Use link netns in newlink() of rtnl_link_ops"), ip6erspan_newlink() correctly resolves the per-netn
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfrm: defensively unhash xfrm_state lists in __xfrm_state_delete KASAN reproduces a slab-use-after-free in __xfrm_state_delete()'s hlist_del_rcu calls under syzkaller load on linux-6.12.y stab
- 8.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: x86: Fix shadow paging use-after-free due to unexpected GFN The shadow MMU computes GFNs for direct shadow pages using sp->gfn plus the SPTE index. This assumption breaks for shadow pagin
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Bluetooth: hci_conn: fix potential UAF in create_big_sync Add hci_conn_valid() check in create_big_sync() to detect stale connections before proceeding with BIG creation. Handle the resulting
- 8.1 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: ipv6: fix NOREF dst use in seg6 and rpl lwtunnels seg6_input_core() and rpl_input() call ip6_route_input() which sets a NOREF dst on the skb, then pass it to dst_cache_set_ip6() invoking
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Input: edt-ft5x06 - fix use-after-free in debugfs teardown The commit 68743c500c6e ("Input: edt-ft5x06 - use per-client debugfs directory") removed the manual debugfs teardown, relying on the
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ALSA: aloop: Fix peer runtime UAF during format-change stop loopback_check_format() may stop the capture side when playback starts with parameters that no longer match a running capture stream
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RDMA/mana_ib: Disable RX steering on RSS QP destroy When an RSS QP is destroyed (e.g. DPDK exit), mana_ib_destroy_qp_rss() destroys the RX WQ objects but does not disable vPort RX steering in
- 7.8 High severity
Linux: Use After Free
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: atmel-sha204a - Fix potential UAF and memory leak in remove path Unregister the hwrng to prevent new ->read() calls and flush the Atmel I2C workqueue before teardown to prevent a poten