The Redmond Giants have added quite a few new features to Microsoft Edge in the last few months, but the company is now focusing on a new security-focused feature called Edge’s “Super Duper Secure Mode” (SDSM). It is working.
Edge Super Duper Secure Mode
The company announced a new security mode through an official post on the Microsoft Browser Vulnerability Research Blog. In the post, lead researcher Jonathan Norman explained that the team is working on new features in Edge. “Challenges the traditional assumptions that many in the browser community have.”
Following this, Norman explained how web browsers struggle to deliver efficient performance while ensuring a secure browsing experience. He also compiles Just-In-Time (JIT), which is a complex pipeline used to optimize the JavaScript engine used, especially JavasScript code, to improve performance for most cyberattacks on web browsers. He said it was intended to be used.
According to Microsoft researchers, 45% of security bugs patched with the V8 JavaScript engine are related to JIT compilation. If you don’t know, the V8 JavaScript engine enhances various popular web browsers on the market, such as Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, and of course Microsoft’s Edge.
So NS Edge’s “Super Duper Secure Mode” allows you to turn off JIT To reduce the amount of security vulnerabilities. However, because the JIT is responsible for improving performance, there is a significant reduction in performance and power efficiency.
Microsoft Edge Super Duper Secure Mode: Performance Hit?
During the initial testing of Super Duper Secure Mode on Edge, the VR team identified key performance-related issues. For example, turning off JIT increased power usage by 11%, page load time by 17%, and power usage by 2.3%.
Overall, Microsoft Edge’s benchmark score with the new mode turned on is 58% lower than the score with the JIT turned on, resulting in a significant performance penalty.
However, Jonathan points out that while web browser benchmark tests score very low, users are often unaware of this effect. “The benchmark shows only part of the larger performance story.” Therefore, if Microsoft enables Super Duper Secure Mode in the future, users will have to make a trade-off between performance and security.
With this security mode now available in Edge, SDSM is now an experimental feature. However, according to Norman, the VR team will continue to work on improving this feature in the coming months.In addition, Norman has SDSM “We will intelligently enable these mitigations based on risk so that users can balance the trade-offs.”
If you want to try out the new Super Duper Secure Mode on Microsoft Edge, you can find it under edge: // flags for Edge Canary, Dev, and Beta versions.
