Code Room
System designHardsd-g327
Subject CdnLevel Senior–Staff~40 minCommon in Security · Storage & CDN interviewsIndustries Technology

Question

Design the cache-key normalization and isolation strategy for a multi-tenant CDN to prevent cache poisoning and cross-tenant cache leakage. Threats include: an attacker crafting a request that gets a malicious response cached and served to other users (poisoning via unkeyed headers), one tenant's content served from another's cache, and cache deception (tricking the cache into storing a sensitive authenticated page). Design what goes into the cache key, what must be normalized or stripped, and the rules that keep the cache safe.

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.

Narrate your design
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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.