Leak
A term used to describe a software issue that causes the computer or hardware device to lose resources that are no longer in use. A leak may be caused when a program does not close properly or when the program has a bug causing it to not release the resources properly after they have been used. Commonly, the term leak is used to describe a memory leak, which is a software program that does not release the memory resources or keeps information in the memory that is no longer being used.
When a leak occurs, you will notice a degrade of performance on your computer or hardware device. For example, with a memory leak, the program may continue to consume the memory until it is exhausted or causes the computer or hardware device to crash. Microsoft Windows users can easily identify memory leaks by opening the Windows Task Manager; if a program's "mem usage" never stops increasing, it's likely that program is exhibiting a memory leak.
A leak can be temporarily resolved by closing and restarting the program, causing the memory leak or rebooting the computer or hardware device. To permanently resolve a leak a patch for the program would need to be downloaded and installed, if available.
Also see: Memory definition