The main interior graph-node dispatch loop has an ages-old dangling vector references:
for (i = 0; i < _vec_len (nm->pending_frames); i++)
cpu_time_now = dispatch_pending_node (vm, nm->pending_frames + i,
cpu_time_now);
Passing a pointer to a vector element has considerable comedic potential if there's any chance that the vector could expand.
dispatch_pending_node() calls dispatch_node() - and indirectly any interior graph node dispatch function. If that node happens to expand nm->pending_frames by filling in a new frame, nm->pending_frames can expand.
After calling the node dispatch function, dispatch_node() does the following:
nf = vec_elt_at_index (nm->next_frames, p->next_frame_index);
If nm->pending_frames expands, p is a dangling reference to freed memory. By luck, the TCP stack managed to allocate a fresh frame which included "old-p," which caused p->next_frame_index to be filled with the new-frame poison pattern 0xfefefefe.
This has been broken from day 1, summer 2007, first use of the third-generation vector processing library