Latent Defect Vc Masked Defect

Latent Defect:

It is an existing defect that has not yet caused a failure just because the exact set of conditions has never been met. 

E.g. February has 28 days. The system could have not considered the leap year which results in a latent defect Masked defect hides other defects in the system. 

Masked Defect:

Masked Defect is an existing effect that hasn't yet caused a failure, just because another defect has prevented that part of the code from being executed. 

E.g. there is a link to add employee in the system. On clicking this link you can also add a task for the employee. Let’s assume, both the functionality have bugs. However, the first bug (Add an employee) goes unnoticed. Because of this the bug in the add task is masked.