Out of the blue, I'm seeing multiple instances of in Console, mostly for Safari 5.1.10, which I use almost exclusively, but also for Firefox 40.0.

I've never seen it before, and a Google search turned up nothing.

Anybody?

Thanks.

Duck Duck Go turns up a number of references to Vector Smash home security systems.

sounds like something to mitigate a form of attack. a "vector smash" sounds like a term a coder would use for corrupting a vector, leading to unintended behavior, that may allow the attacker that instigated the smashing to control how the behavior is controlled.

"stack smash" and "heap smash" are related terms. don't usually see it referring to vectors, but that's not too far off base.

Thanks, guys.

I've been running with a Console window open on my desktop to see if I could make a connection, but no luck.

The message pops up at odd times...when I click on a link, a coupl'a seconds after I either close a Safari window or hide Safari, but nothing reproducible.

'Tis truly a puzzlement.

I've now begun a discussion at AdBlock, because updating it has been the only thing I've done recently that even remotely affects Safari, but there's nothing in their changelog that sounds like it's got any relevance.

I dunno!

Edit: Forgot to mention that sometimes the messages come singly, and sometimes in batches.

I've now tried running with all of my extensions turned off, but no joy.

And the messages turned up in Console in my test user account, too...both Safari and Firefox.

I know I am probably plowing ground that you have already covered in detail, but I don't like problems without answers. So I just spent some time searching the internet about this (Your thread on the AdBlock forums turned up in that search). Obviously this is not a problem limited to OS X (the error showed up in both Windows and Ubuntu forums). FWIW I observed three factors common to more than one report. (NOTE: these were all reported on third party forums and not on product specific forums.) In order of frequency the common factors were:

1. Sites with lots of graphics
2. Firefox. In fact on a Windows forum there was a comment to the effect the problem was fixed in Chrome but the user wanted to use Firefox.
3. Java

You might try posting on the Firefox forum and see if anyone there has a solution. Given the suspected, albeit tenuous, link to Java, it would not hurt to be sure you have Java 8 Build 51 (the latest as of 08/22/2015) installed.

Thanks for adding all that; your searching was more productive - probably just plain more thorough - than mine.

My experience has been inconsistent... The messages invariably appear immediately upon my launching Firefox, my homepage being WQXR.org, which is not what I'd call graphics intensive.

With Safari, on the other hand, I don't see the messages until around 5-10 seconds after I hide it (I never quit it.), but not every time, and I invariably visit graphics intensive sites such as eBay and Weather Underground.

I've got Java turned off in /Applications/Utilities/Java Preferences.app (Edit: since long before the messages began turning up), and I'd rather run without it if turning it on is the answer. (Max Java for 10.6.8)

I think I'm just going to throw in the towel and live with this, because as far as I can tell, it's not at all a problem, merely a curiosity.

I just don't get it though! How does a completely undocumented error message turn up out of the blue on Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms?