| second-system effect
= S =
security through obscurity
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 `Nth-level damage'. There is at least
one case on record in which 17 hours of grovelling 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.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.
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