A use-after-free vulnerability can occur when the widget listener is holding strong references to browser objects that have previously been freed, resulting in a potentially exploitable crash when these references are used. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 52.6, Firefox ESR < 52.6, and Firefox < 58.
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 Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.