Known as Super Duper Secure Mode, the mode is being worked on by the Microsoft browser vulnerability research team and aims to make one of the best web browsers (opens in new tab) out there even more secure than before. It’s very experimental right now but the aim is that it’ll make it much harder for attacks trying to exploit bugs in the browser, all by turning off certain optimizations. The downside? It’ll slow your browser down. That’s because it turns off a feature of Edge’s JavaScript engine that works to make a website’s code run faster. Known as Just-In-Time complication (JIT for short), it helps improve performance but it’s also very complicated which is how bugs slip in. That’s also how security exploits can develop that even the best internet security software (opens in new tab) can’t tackle. In the report by Microsoft (opens in new tab), it cites that analysis by Mozilla found that over half of the real-world Chrome exploits since 2018 were related to exploitation of JIT (opens in new tab) so there are some considerable pros and cons to the performance enhancing system.
Super Duper Secure Mode?
Right now, test versions of Edge can enable Super Duper Secure Mode to see how it works. A reporter at The Verge (opens in new tab) didn’t notice any particular issues with speed but, of course, the internet is vast and your mileage may vary depending on what you’re doing online. Crucially, it’s early days for the charmingly titled mode so Microsoft is keen to tweak it substantially. The team has already noted that it’s considering making the mode smarter by having it enable and disable protections depending on the risk a website may pose, or how resource intensive it might be. The latter may not be an issue if you’re using one of the best home computers (opens in new tab) but it’s sure to help everyone. For now, the experimental mode is in its very early stages so it’s probably not worth checking out unless you’re keen to evaluate test builds. Microsoft has explained there are ‘quite a few technical challenges to overcome’ before it becomes mainstream but there’s certainly a lot of promise here. Expect to see more on how Microsoft is figuring out how to balance things.
