Code RoomCredential-stuffing protection
HardPrep Room Coding #3182

Credential-stuffing protection

System designNetworking & APIsSenior–Staff~45 min

Design abuse/throttling protection for a login endpoint under credential-stuffing attacks. Attackers rotate across thousands of IPs and try many usernames, so per-IP limits alone don't catch them. You must throttle attackers hard while barely affecting legitimate users (a shared corporate NAT can put thousands of real users behind one IP). Design the multi-dimensional rate-limiting/throttling scheme and how you avoid false positives.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.

Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
0:00
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.