With the help of Apple and some third-party researchers, we finally have a deeper understanding of the reasons why long-term deleted photos begin to reappear on devices running iOS 17.5.Although Apple released an iOS 17.5.1 iPhone update earlier this week to fix this problem, and blamed it on "database corruption", the company is still secretive about what caused old files (including deleted nude photos in some reports) to appear on devices that never carried them.
Apple explained this problem to 9to5Mac in detail, saying that it was caused by the corruption of database entries on the device file system, which affected the files of the device itself, rather than those synchronized to iCloud.These files may be transferred from the old device during backup recovery or transfer between devices.
A Reddit user once said in a deleted post that the vulnerability of iOS 17.5 caused the photo on an iPad to reappear, which had been cleared and sold to a friend.However, Apple claimed that this was impossible. It told 9to5Mac that once the device's data was completely cleared, all files and contents would be permanently deleted.
Basically, Apple claimed that the user either didn't follow the correct device reset procedure or lied just to gain influence on Reddit.The company said that only a few people were affected by the database problem, and Apple could not access photos or video files on users' mobile phones.
Synactin's security researchers also extended the iOS 17.5.1 update to fix this problem through reverse engineering.You can find a detailed explanation in their full report, but in short, iOS 17.5 has added a migration routine to scan and re import photos from the file system.Apple's latest update deleted this routine because it will cause old files to be re indexed in the local file system and pushed back to the photo library.
Synacktiv said: "According to this code, we can say that the photos that reappear are still in the file system, and they are only found by the migration routine added in iOS 17.5."Based on this analysis alone, it is impossible to determine how these photos were left on the file system. Synacktiv's article then guides readers to view this comment on Reddit to get a reasonable explanation, including that users may save pictures to both file applications and photo applications, but only delete the latter.
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