In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: phy: ti: tusb1210: Resolve charger-det crash if charger psy is unregistered The power_supply frame-work is not really designed for there to be long living in kernel references to power_supply devices. Specifically unregistering a power_supply while some other code has a reference to it triggers a WARN in power_supply_unregister(): WARN_ON(atomic_dec_return(&psy->use_cnt)); Folllowed by the power_supply still getting removed and the backing data freed anyway, leaving the tusb1210 charger-detect code with a dangling reference, resulting in a crash the next time tusb1210_get_online() is called. Fix this by only holding the reference in tusb1210_get_online() freeing it at the end of the function. Note this still leaves a theoretical race window, but it avoids the issue when manually rmmod-ing the charger chip driver during development.
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 Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.