I wonder if the database corruption stemmed from the job responsible for deleting photos after approximately 40 days. This job likely involves two main steps: (

I wonder if the database corruption stemmed from the job responsible for deleting photos after approximately 40 days. This job likely involves two main steps: (1) deleting the actual file and (2) updating the database. At guess, in some rare cases, step (2) might occur even if step (1) fails. Could this issue have arisen because step (1) occasionally failed due to changes in iOS's security model over the years? Did the photos reappear when the database was rebuilt or reindexed from files stored on the device? With the messaging based hacks exploiting images encoders, pdfs etc it seems plausible to me that they added some protections that could have made file I/O more sandboxed and accidentally over-sandboxed it in some scenarios and the error codes weren't being checked.