App Store Review is the process a software marketplace uses to check an app before it is published or updated. It typically examines code, permissions, metadata and policy compliance, and may also look for malware, privacy issues or unsafe use of APIs.
How App Store Review Works
App Store review sits between development and publication. The marketplace inspects an app’s package, declared permissions, metadata and policy posture before allowing it to reach users, which makes the review step a gate on both quality and trust.
It is not a guarantee of safety, but it does reduce obvious abuse, such as hidden capabilities, misleading descriptions, or apps that request access they do not need. A review process also gives the platform a chance to enforce rules consistently across many publishers.
What Reviewers Are Trying to Catch
The main goal is to spot issues that would harm users after install. That includes malware, privacy abuse, deceptive behavior, insecure use of platform APIs, and patterns that suggest the app is trying to bypass marketplace policy rather than serve a legitimate product need.
Reviewers also look for mismatches between what the app says it does and what the code or permissions indicate. That mismatch matters because app-store trust depends on the package, listing, and runtime behavior all telling the same story.
For organisations, this is one reason to treat mobile apps like any other third-party software supply chain. An app store badge lowers friction, but it does not replace internal due diligence on vendor risk, code provenance, or data handling expectations. For broader software-supply-chain governance, see OWASP CICD-SEC-8 Ungoverned Usage of Third-Party Services Guide.
Why App Store Review Is Not a Complete Security Control
Review is a pre-release filter, not continuous assurance. Threats can appear after approval through code updates, compromised publisher accounts, malicious dependencies, remote configuration changes, or permission creep that was not obvious during the original review.
That means the security value of review depends on follow-up controls, not just on the approval decision itself. Monitoring app behavior after release, validating what permissions are actually exercised, and re-checking metadata and policy changes over time are all part of the real security picture.
Marketplace review is especially important when apps request access to sensitive data, tokens, or account capabilities. The same trust issue appears in other ecosystems where third-party integrations are approved for broad access, as shown in How to review Salesforce connected apps and integration users and How to audit Slack apps, bots and tokens.
What Good App Store Review Depends On
Effective review depends on accurate inventory, clear policy rules, and enough technical context to judge whether the app’s declared behavior matches its real behavior. Reviewers need to see permissions, API use, external endpoints, embedded SDKs, and whether the app’s privacy disclosures are believable.
For teams that publish mobile software, the practical lesson is that review readiness starts long before submission. Clean dependency hygiene, accurate permission requests, honest metadata, and minimal data collection all make it easier to pass review and easier to defend the app if it is challenged later.
Where the app connects to identity or other enterprise systems, the review lens should extend to access scope and third-party trust. In that sense, review is not just a publishing checkpoint, it is also a governance checkpoint for what the app can reach once users install it.
Risk and Threat Considerations
App store review reduces obvious abuse, but it can miss apps that are benign at submission and harmful later, or apps that conceal risky behavior behind third-party services, delayed execution, or minimal initial functionality. That makes it a weak spot when organisations assume approval equals safety.
Failure mechanism: Attackers or abusive publishers can use approval to gain distribution trust, then change the app, the backend, or the data path after release in ways that were not visible during the original review.
Impact: Users may install apps that exfiltrate data, over-request access, abuse APIs, or become a foothold for fraud, privacy loss, or account compromise.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP API Security Top 10 addresses the attack and risk surface, while OWASP ASVS and CIS Controls v8 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP ASVS | V8 — Authorization | App Store Review checks whether app capabilities and permissions exceed intended access. |
| V13 — Configuration | Review examines metadata, permissions and release settings that shape an app's security posture. | |
| V16 — Security Logging and Error Handling | Post-release detection and review depend on evidence that shows malicious or unsafe behavior. | |
| Recommendation — Verify that app functions are authorized only to the minimum access they require. Review configuration and release settings for unsafe defaults before publication. Log and review security-relevant events so abuse can be detected after approval. | ||
| OWASP API Security Top 10 | API8 — Security Misconfiguration | Apps that misuse platform APIs or expose unsafe settings are a core app-review concern. |
| Recommendation — Check API and integration settings for misconfiguration before approving release. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-15 — Service Provider Management | App store review is a third-party software governance checkpoint for externally supplied apps. |
| Recommendation — Assess third-party apps and publishers before allowing them into production use. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
Why practitioners should care: Treat app store review as one control in a larger assurance chain, not as a final security verdict. For mobile publishers, the goal is to make the app’s permissions, metadata, and runtime behavior easy to verify and hard to misrepresent.
What to watch for: Review friction often exposes deeper problems, such as excessive permissions, unclear data use, hidden SDKs, or weak change control after release. Those are usually the real issues to fix, not just the submission paperwork.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- What do mobile teams get wrong about app store review and platform controls?
- How should mobile app teams build privacy disclosure into development so App Store review does not become a late-stage blocker?
- How should mobile app teams reduce the risk of malicious or vulnerable apps slipping through store review processes?
- What should organisations expect when app store governance relies too heavily on pre-publication review alone?