Microsoft said it will change Edge’s password handling as a “defense‑in‑depth” measure.
Originally, Edge decrypted the entire saved‑password store on startup and kept all credentials resident in process memory in clear text for the whole browser session, regardless of whether a given credential was ever used or not.
A short while ago, Microsoft said this plaintext password behavior was by design. Now, Microsoft has changed course, and the new password-handling behavior is already present in Canary (the experimental preview version of Microsoft Edge), with rollout prioritized across all channels.
The researcher who originally flagged the issue said:
“Edge is the only Chromium‑based browser I’ve tested that behaves this way. By contrast, Chrome uses a design that makes it far harder for attackers to extract saved passwords by simply reading process memory.”
