Web Cache Overflow: Exploiting Imprecise Keys for Cache Degradation and Beyond

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 5 Aug 2026] Web Cache Overflow: Exploiting Imprecise Keys for Cache Degradation and Beyond Matteo Golinelli, Kaan Onarlioglu, Bruno Crispo Web caches support the scalability needs of contemporary web applications by storing frequently accessed objects closer to clients. Web caches are conceptually associative arrays, tracking stored objects using cache keys consisting of HTTP request fields. However, these cache keys are often imprecisely defined by website operators. This allows clients to craft a multitude of requests that target the same object, but map to different cache keys. In this work, we show that request elements included unnecessarily in cache keys can be abused to create redundant cache entries. In susceptible deployments, sustained generation of such redundant copies reduces cache effectiveness and increases origin load, facilitating eviction-dependent attacks. Our experiments reproduce cache degradation across five stand-alone caching proxies and characterize how these parameters affect attacker cost and cache hit rate, potentially resulting in denial-of-service attacks. We conclude that precise cache-key design is the most direct mitigation against this abuse vector and should be recognized as a security best practice. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2608.04744 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2608.04744v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.04744 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Matteo Golinelli [view email] [v1] Wed, 5 Aug 2026 12:12:33 UTC (373 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)