While dangling pointers are a common coding error (especially in C++) there has previously been no way known to exploit them. In fact, they were generally considered a quality control issue rather than a security issue. That is all set to change. According to an article today from SearchSecurity Jonathan Afek and Adi Sharabani of Watchfire Inc have uncovered a way to exploit generic dangling pointers to run shell code on a server in much the same fashion as buffer overflows. According to Danny Allen (also of Watchfire) this technique can be used on any application with dangling pointers.
Afek will be giving a presentation on the technique in August at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas.
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