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Security report for creativecommons.org

Creative Commons Corporation · Non-profit · Canada

Medium risk. 6 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

66/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

Creative Commons Corporation is a well-established international nonprofit organization founded in 2001, dedicated to promoting open access to knowledge and culture through its globally recognized licensing tools and community initiatives. The organization serves a broad audience including educators, creators, and institutions, positioning itself as a leader in the open licensing and commons movement. The website reflects this mission with rich content, professional design, and active community engagement. Technically, the website is built on WordPress with modern SEO and analytics tools integrated, including Yoast SEO and Google Analytics via MonsterInsights. Hosting and DNS services are provided by reputable providers including Gandi SAS and Cloudflare. The site demonstrates good mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, although some improvements in security headers and cookie consent mechanisms could enhance compliance and security posture. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS with strong SSL configuration and employs domain transfer protections. However, DNSSEC is not enabled, and security headers are absent, representing areas for improvement. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected. Privacy compliance is supported by a comprehensive privacy policy and terms of service, but cookie consent mechanisms are lacking. Overall, the website is trustworthy, professionally maintained, and aligned with the organization's nonprofit mission. The domain registration data corroborates the legitimacy and history of the organization. Strategic recommendations include enabling DNSSEC, implementing security headers, and adding cookie consent to strengthen privacy compliance and security posture.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of creativecommons.org. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

6 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…
  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

    • High

      No Cookie Consent Banner found

      GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

      What to do: Implement a cookie consent banner that appears on first visit

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching creativecommons.org

This scan found 23 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

€25per month

  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
65
Security headers
15
Email security
85
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
66

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention creativecommons.org, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
2,229
Employees
0
Customers
2,180
Third parties
49
Weak passwords
17%

12 subdomains affected

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for creativecommons.org.

Select it in the checkout above.

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

Creative Commons holds a strong market position as a pioneering nonprofit in the open licensing space, with a business model centered on providing free licenses, educational resources, and community support to foster sharing of creative works globally. Its partnerships with major organizations like Wikipedia, The Met, and Khan Academy underscore its influence and reach. Revenue streams likely include donations and grants, supported by visible donation calls on the website. The organization targets a diverse global audience including educators, creators, and institutions interested in open culture. Growth indicators include active community engagement, global summits, and certification programs. The partnership ecosystem is robust, with multiple related domains supporting various aspects of its mission.

Security posture

The website demonstrates a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS, domain transfer lock, and anonymized IP tracking in analytics. However, the absence of DNSSEC and security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and Strict-Transport-Security indicates room for enhancement. No incident response or security policy pages were found, which could improve transparency and readiness. The lack of a vulnerability disclosure or security.txt file suggests limited formal vulnerability management communication. Overall, the security risks are low but can be mitigated further by adopting recommended best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC to protect against DNS spoofing and improve domain security.
  2. Implement security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security to enhance browser security.
  3. Add a cookie consent banner or mechanism to comply fully with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
  4. Publish a dedicated security policy and incident response contact information to improve transparency and preparedness.
  5. Consider creating a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Creative Commons Corporation
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Creative Commons Corporation
Description
Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture to address global challenges and create a brighter future.
Key services
Open licensing tools, Educational resources, Community network, Global summits and events, Search portal for openly licensed content
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
WordPress, Yoast SEO plugin, Google Analytics (MonsterInsights), Cloudflare DNS
Frameworks
Yoast SEO
Platforms
WordPress CMS
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced with SSL
  • Client transfer prohibited domain status
  • IP anonymization enabled in Google Analytics

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Marketing tools
MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin
Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Website is professionally designed and well maintained.
  2. Content is rich, relevant, and updated regularly.
  3. Strong nonprofit branding and trust signals.
  4. No signs of malicious or suspicious activity.
  5. Some minor improvements possible in security headers and cookie consent.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is built on a stable and widely used CMS platform, WordPress, enhanced with Yoast SEO for search optimization and MonsterInsights for analytics. Hosting and DNS are managed by reputable providers, ensuring reliability. The site loads with moderate performance and is well optimized for mobile devices and accessibility standards. The technical stack is modern but could benefit from additional security hardening measures. No deprecated or vulnerable libraries were detected in the provided scripts. The site uses standard web technologies and best practices for SEO and user experience.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 65/100 +13Medium32 findingsView report
  2. 52/100 −11Medium31 findingsView report
  3. 63/100Medium27 findingsView report
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