iPhone hacking expert Jonathan Zdziarski, author of iPhone Forensics reported recently about his discovery that the iPhone actually stores a screenshot every time you press the Home button. These screenshots are used to create the zooming effect while returning to your Home screen and may seem innocent enough, but they can be retrieved by prying eyes should your device fall in to the wrong hands.
Now Zdziarski has published a very simple workaround to halt the creation and storage of these images. The workaround requires a jailbroken iPhone or iPhone 3G because you will need to make some small changes to the file system.
…screenshots themselves actually get written to /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots. If you delete this folder and symlink it to /dev/null, the screenshots don’t get written to disk. The side effect to this is that when resuming an application, you’ll get the default screen in the zoom-in effect. Once the application resumes, however, you’ll have your application screen back…
To accomplish this workaround you simply have to execute the following commands on your jailbroken unit via SSH or a Native Terminal App:
# rm -rf /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots
# ln -s /dev/null /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots
To revert back to your default factory settings, erase the newly created symlink with the following command and the iPhone will recreate the proper files:
#rm /var/mobile/Library/Caches/Snapshots
Not really sure why this is important? The photo disappears as soon as the screen changes. I see no record of it in the film roll.
The data may be accessible from the CLI-but even if it is, so what? Wanna see my Icons? What a thrill.
And lets assume worst case scenario-you are using Safari to online bank-if you are not logging out of your account before closing Safari, you are unsafe anyway.
I really think this is much ado about nothing…
The photo doesn’t disappear when the screen changes, it get’s stored in the folder mentioned in the article.
One quick reason I could think of to get rid of those images, would be if you needed to exchange your iPhone due to something like a defective battery. Erasing any screenshots a.k.a. evidence of unauthorized Applications, which nullify your warranty, would be a wise idea.
LOL “unauthorized Applications, which nullify your warranty”
And since you have to jailbreak your phone to to this patch… duh….
I used the example of unauthorized Applications because those would be evidence of a Jailbreak. A jailbreak without unauthorized apps installed wouldn’t be detected from looking at those image files. It is an example of why someone would want to remove these files. What does your point of jailbreaking to accomplish this task have to do with anything in the comment above?
im gona disable it anyway…lets say i have to send my iphone 2 repair…b4 i send if i restore the fw…wouldnt all my data get deleted…wait…even if i do that…they still can find if i had cfw on?
Just restoring your iPhone leaves tons of data behind, that’s why Apple released a specific tool to wipe your iPhone data if you intend to resell it or give it to someone else.
Alias420 where can I find this tool?
it’s part of firmware 3.0