secondary damage

secondary damage

When a fatal error occurs (especially a segfault) theimmediate cause may be that a pointer has been trashed due toa previous fandango on core. However, this fandango mayhave been due to an *earlier* fandango, so no amount ofanalysis will reveal (directly) how the damage occurred. "Thedata structure was clobbered, but it was secondary damage."

By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascadedfandangoes on core is "Nth-level damage". There is at leastone case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling with"adb" actually dug up the underlying bug behind an instance ofseventh-level damage! The hacker who accomplished thisnear-superhuman feat was presented with an award by hisfellows.