With the help of Apple and some third-party researchers, we finally have a better idea of why devices running iOS 17.5 are starting to reappear long-deleted photos. Although Apple released an iOS 17.5.1 iPhone update earlier this week to address the issue, which it attributed to “corruption of the database,” the company remains open to questions about what specifically caused the deletion of old files, including some reported nude photos. The reasons are tight-lipped.
Refine the problem into 9 to 5, Apple says this is caused by corrupted database entries on the device’s file system, affecting files on the device itself, rather than those that have been synced to iCloud. These files may be inherited from the old device when restoring from backup or during device-to-device transfer.
Apple says it can’t access photo or video files on users’ phones and only a small number of people are affected
A Reddit user previously claimed in a now-deleted post that a bug in iOS 17.5 was causing the reappearance of photos on iPads that had been wiped and sold to friends. However, Apple claims this is not possible and says 9 to 5 Once a device is completely wiped, all files and content are permanently deleted. Essentially, Apple is claiming that the user either didn’t follow proper device reset procedures or was simply lying to gain Reddit influence. The company said only a small number of people were affected by the database issue and that Apple was unable to access photo or video files on users’ phones.
Security researchers at Synactiv also expanded on the issue by reverse engineering the iOS 17.5.1 update that was designed to fix the issue. You can find a detailed explanation in their full report, but in short, iOS 17.5 adds a new migration routine that takes care of scanning and re-importing photos from the file system. A recent update from Apple removed this routine because it caused old archives to be re-indexed on the native file system and pushed back into the Photos library.
“Based on this code, we can say that the reappeared photos still exist in the file system, they were just discovered by the migration routine added in iOS 17.5,” Synacktiv said. “Based on this analysis alone, it cannot be concluded that the photos were originally How to stay on the file system.” The Synacktiv article then directed readers to this comment on Reddit for a reasonable explanation, which included that users can save images to the Files app and the Photos app, and Only delete the latter.
