Microsoft Adds Super Duper Secure Mode to Its Edge Browser

Bradley Rhodes -

Microsoft announced another experimental feature that has become available in its Edge browser. It's called Super Duper Secure Mode, and it turns off familiar performance and optimization features to make surfing the Web more secure.

In particular, the Super Duper Secure Mode implies disabling a JavaScript V8 engine's Just-In-Time (JIT) feature, which is responsible for dynamically compiling JavaScript code into machine code. JIT plays an important role in all modern web browsers since it improves performance and browser speed. However, it has a complex structure that can lead to multiple vulnerabilities. Therefore, the JIT support in the V8 engine poses security concerns: 45% of all V8 vulnerabilities discovered in 2019 were associated with this technology. In addition, most of the Chrome exploits are also JIT-related bugs.

A series of tests that the Edge team conducted have shown that while JIT plays a key role in speeding up browsers, it is not as important to improving Edge's performance, as compared to how important it was in the 2010s. Therefore, users are unlikely to notice any decrease in surfing speed in the new mode.

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In the new Super Duper Secure Mode, Microsoft not only disabled JIT, but also enabled other security-related features such as Controlflow-Enforcement Technology and Arbitrary Code Guard, which usually conflict with JIT.

For now, the new mode is experimental, and it is unknown if the feature will ever make it to stable versions of Edge. However, Edge Canary users, developers, and beta users can enable it by visiting:

edge://flags/#edge-enable-super-duper-secure-mode.

Microsoft assures that Super Duper Secure Mode should only be enabled on resource-intensive or suspicious resources.

Edge browser is based on Chromium and uses the same JavaScript engine (V8) as Chrome. Therefore, if the new feature becomes successful, it can be applied to other browsers as well.

Microsoft Edge will remain the only browser available in the future Windows 11 by default because the legendary Internet Explorer is retiring.