Let's say you're in charge of the security of an online app store -- any app store will do, whether it be Apple's App Store, Android's Market, or even one of the many Linux app repositories. Your customers' computing safety depends to a large degree on the work you do.

And if your app store has built its reputation on being rigorous about how well it vets the apps it makes available, your customers have an implicit, if not explicit, expectation that the apps they get from your store meet some basic security criteria.

What kind of security criteria? Excellent question. Let's consider that a bit. At the very least, the apps should do what they're advertised to do, and they should contain no back doors, malicious features, viruses, spyware and so on.

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