secondary damage

n. When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault ) the immediate cause may be
that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous fandango on core. However,
this fandango may have been due to an earlier fandango, so no amount of
analysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred. The data structure
was clobbered, but it was secondary damage. By extension, the corruption
resulting from N cascaded fandangoes on core is N th-level damage. There is
at least one case on record in which 17 hours of grovel ling with adb
actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance of seventh-level
damage! The hacker who accomplished this near-superhuman feat was presented
with an award by his fellows.

