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Security report for loc.gov

Library of Congress · Government · United States

Medium risk. 7 critical or high findings in Security headers, GDPR outside view and 1 other check.

Security score

67/100

Risk levelMedium

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

The website loc.gov represents the Library of Congress, a major US government institution providing archival and research library services. The domain is well-established with a creation date in 1997, consistent with the institution's long history. However, the current HTML content is a Cloudflare security challenge page, blocking access to the actual website content. This prevents detailed analysis of the site's content, policies, and technical implementation. The site uses Cloudflare for security and performance, but no privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies are visible in the provided content. No contact information or social media links are present. The domain registration is privacy protected but justified given the government nature. Overall, the site is safe with no adult or questionable content detected, but the security challenge limits the ability to assess the website fully.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
35/ 100 · High
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

7 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 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 Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

    • 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 loc.gov

This scan found 21 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.

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  • 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
75
Security headers
55
Email security
60
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
35
Average
67

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 loc.gov, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
3,775
Employees
0
Customers
3,696
Third parties
79
Weak passwords
6%

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 loc.gov.

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

The Library of Congress operates as a government-funded public service entity, targeting researchers, government officials, and the general public. Its market position is that of a national government institution providing essential archival and legislative research services. The business model is non-commercial, supported by government funding. There are no visible partnerships or subsidiaries in the provided data. The website likely serves as a digital portal for access to collections and information but is currently inaccessible due to security measures.

Security posture

The website employs Cloudflare's security services, including a Turnstile captcha challenge to mitigate automated access and potential attacks. DNSSEC is not enabled, which is a recommended improvement for DNS security. No security headers or incident response policies are visible in the provided content. The lack of visible privacy and cookie policies indicates potential compliance gaps. The domain registration is privacy protected but legitimate. Overall, the security posture is moderate but limited by the inability to inspect the full site content.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC on the domain to enhance DNS security and prevent spoofing.
  2. Publish clear and accessible privacy, cookie, and terms of service policies on the website.
  3. Implement and publicly document a vulnerability disclosure and incident response policy.
  4. Add security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security to improve security posture.
  5. Consider reducing WAF challenge friction for legitimate users to improve accessibility and user experience.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Cloudflare detected. The HTML content is a Cloudflare security challenge page with Turnstile captcha verifying the user is human before accessing the site. These observations may be incomplete. For a fuller analysis, contact guard@offseq.com.

Business

Company
Library of Congress
Description
The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States.
Key services
Archival and research library services, Digital collections access, Legislative research support

Technology

Stack
Cloudflare, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
poor

Advertising

Transparency
poor

Site quality

Key observations

  1. Website content is currently blocked by Cloudflare WAF challenge page.
  2. No privacy, cookie, or terms of service policies found in the provided HTML.
  3. No contact information or forms detected in the provided content.
  4. No security headers or advanced security configurations visible in the HTML.
  5. No analytics or tracking scripts detected beyond Cloudflare challenge scripts.
  6. No social media or external business-related links found in the HTML.
  7. The domain is a US government domain with a long history and appropriate registration.
  8. Content safety is high with no adult or questionable content.
  9. Technical and content quality analysis is limited due to WAF blocking.
Technical notes

Notes

The website uses Cloudflare as a hosting and security provider, leveraging their Turnstile captcha for bot mitigation. The HTML is modern with responsive design considerations, but actual content is blocked by the WAF challenge. No CMS or backend technologies are identifiable from the provided content. Performance and SEO cannot be assessed due to content blocking. The site uses standard web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. There is an opportunity to improve DNS security by enabling DNSSEC and to enhance security headers.
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. 67/100Medium30 findingsView report
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