In C, this error is often caused by dereferencing a null pointer or by a stack overflow.
Utilities like CRED and TinyCC produce these phenomena as safety measures, while the similar utility ProPolice produces one when it discovers that the "terminator" or "random" canaries have been overwritten. In x86 Linux, a message alerting the user to this situation is mislabeled, instead suggesting a related "page protection" phenomenon. One way to produce this situation is to not keep track of the return value of the function malloc. Its cause can be ascertained by backtracing a core file using a debugger. In C, this error is often caused by dereferencing a null pointer or by a stack overflow. For 10 points, name this unwanted situation, also known as a bus error, which occurs when a program tries to access memory that the CPU cannot address.
Utilities like CRED and TinyCC produce these phenomena as safety measures, while the similar utility ProPolice produces one when it discovers that the "terminator" or "random" canaries have been overwritten.
segmentation fault [or segfault; or access violation; accept bus error before read; prompt on fault]