Binary Searchmedium45 minSecurity Engineer

Attack Minimum Feasible Throughput

Security Engineer signal: binary search on answer + monotonic predicate in a attack path analysis context. This is a ProdMatch-owned security engineer drill, framed as a March 2026 CRED Cloud Security simulation, not a copied platform question.

Company context

CRED · Cloud Security

Freshness

March 2026

Product surface

attack path analysis

ProdMatch interview simulation based on product-team patterns; not a claim of a real company question.

Question

For attack path analysis, choose the minimum processing rate so all assets finish before deadline. Each worker can process rate units per minute, rounded up per item.

Input

Work item sizes and deadline minutes.

Output

Minimum integer rate.

Constraints

1 <= items.length <= 200000
1 <= item size <= 1e9
Deadline is at least items.length.

Concepts

attack graphs
policy tries
anomaly detection
binary search on answer
monotonic predicate

sizes [3,6,7,11], deadline=8 -> 4

Approach

Try framing your own approach first. The 30 seconds you think before peeking is where learning happens.

Clean Solution

Reveal the approach first.

How well did you understand?

Your rating tunes when this problem shows up again.

Common Mistakes

Use low + (high - low) // 2 to avoid overflow.
The predicate must be monotonic or binary search is invalid.

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