secondary damage

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 {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.