Understanding Application Security

In an ideal world, all Windows Phone applications would come from legitimate sources and behave like good citizens. However, experience shows us that many applications break the rules and that safeguards must be put in place to prevent malicious behavior. On the application security front, the Windows Phone platform includes safeguards to verify the identity of the author of the application and sandboxes the execution of each mobile application. In the next few sections, you will explore these safeguards in detail.

The Windows Phone Marketplace

For a moment, let's travel a couple of decades back in time. The early years of Windows XP were not happy ones at Microsoft. The whole world was upset with the company for allowing its operating system to be exploited by multiple malicious programs. Even though Windows XP shipped with safeguards that could prevent these problems, the activation of the safeguards was left up to the user, and that activation rarely happened. What Microsoft quickly learned from that experience was that it must take on the responsibility to protect its user base from both known and potential harm.