Defaults.Exposed › Reports
State of the Internet — August 2026
Research based on August 2026 census data covering 376 million graded domains across 531 TLDs.
- The Last Mile of HTTPS: Why 27 Million Domains Respond to HTTP but Never Redirect —
~27 million domains have valid TLS certificates but still serve unencrypted HTTP with no redirect and no HSTS — every visitor who types the domain without 'https://' is exposed to SSL stripping. - The Locked Vault: Only 10.9 Million Domains Close Every Attack Surface Simultaneously —
Only 10.9M of 376.9M graded domains (2.9%) pass all five core controls at once. 1.2M (0.33%) fail every single one. The gap is not technical — it is operational. - The Top 1% of the Internet Starts at a B —
376.9M domains scored: entry to the top 1% is 82/100 — a B grade. Only 0.15% earn an A. The median domain scores 45 — a failing F. The web has no security middle class. - The Security Correlation: Which Controls Cluster Together, and Which Sit Alone —
56.8% of 376.9M graded domains have neither SPF nor DMARC. Only 2.9% have all five core controls. Security controls cluster because operator maturity — not cost — is the real variable. - The Phantom TLD Problem: The Domains That Don't Exist —
8 of 1,386 TLDs answer for every name you can invent — inflating .ph's domain count 250× to 14.6 million when the true registration base is about 57,874. Two TLDs were still broadcasting ICANN's name-collision hazard beacon in August 2026. - The Flaky Internet: 20 Million Domains That Only Sometimes Answer —
19,814,020 domains — 4.6% of 432 million scanned — produced inconsistent results across three independent scan attempts. 14.64% of domains that failed their first scan recovered on retry. Here is what that means for internet security measurement. - Who Guards the Web: Cloudflare, WAFs, and the CDN-vs-Origin Measurement Problem —
43,008,476 domains return 'Server: cloudflare' in the August 2026 census — but that number conflates CDN edge-termination with security protection. WAF rules, end-to-end encryption, and origin hardening are invisible in a server header. - The Web Server Census 2026: nginx, Apache, Cloudflare and the Invisible Half —
45.6% of 376 million measured domains suppress their Server header entirely — nearly half the web declines to say what it runs. Of those that declare, Cloudflare leads with 43 million entries. - The Google-and-Yahoo Deadline, Two Years On: Where Email Authentication Stands in August 2026 —
Two and a half years after Google and Yahoo made DMARC a hard requirement, only 9.3% of 376 million graded domains enforce it. 56.8% — 214 million domains — still publish neither SPF nor DMARC at all. - DMARC Without SPF: 16 Million Domains With Half an Email Authentication Stack —
16,238,679 domains publish DMARC but have no SPF record at all — leaving every sending path that lacks DKIM signing with no authentication fallback. August 2026 census data across 376 million domains graded. - Nine Million Domains Where A-Grades Round to Zero —
Across 9,338,016 GoDaddy-default domains, exactly 198 earn an A — an A-rate that rounds to 0.00%. We graded 164.7 million domains by email provider to find out what your MX record says about your security. - SPF Hard Fail vs Soft Fail: Why 82 Million Domains Are Using the Weaker Setting —
82,539,695 domains — 56.4% of all SPF publishers — end their record with ~all (soft fail), providing little real protection. August 2026 census data across 146 million SPF records shows why soft fail became the default and what it costs. - Who Reads the World's DMARC Reports? —
One company receives DMARC spoofing-attack telemetry for 46.8% — 13.9 million — of every report-collecting domain in our 432M-domain census. In most cases nobody chose it. - The Silent Domain: 56.8% of the Internet Has No Email Authentication —
214 million domains — 56.8% of the graded web — publish neither SPF nor DMARC, making the majority of the internet trivially spoofable. August 2026 census of 376.9M domains. - The DNS Landlords: How GoDaddy and Cloudflare Control Nameservers for 94 Million Domains —
GoDaddy and Cloudflare together hold authoritative DNS for 94.7 million domains — 25.1% of the entire graded web — per our August 2026 census of 376.9 million domains. - The Isolation Headers: Why COOP, COEP, and CORP Cover Less Than 1% of the Web —
COOP appears on 0.78%, COEP on 0.48%, and CORP on 0.65% of 376.9 million domains — four years after Spectre made cross-origin isolation essential, fewer than 1 in 100 sites have deployed any of the three required headers. - The HTTP-Only Problem: 44 Million Domains Serving Unencrypted Web in 2026 —
44,443,652 domains — 11.8% of 376.9 million graded — serve HTTP with no TLS, no redirect, and no HSTS, despite free certificates being universally available for over a decade. - CAA Records: 98.9% of Domains Never Restrict Their CA —
98.9% of 376,928,781 domains measured in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census publish no CAA record — leaving them open to certificate issuance by any of approximately 300 publicly trusted certificate authorities. - One CA to Rule Them All: The Certificate Monoculture Report —
Let's Encrypt now secures 50.2% of all 231.5 million certificate-presenting domains measured in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census — and in 23 country-code zones, a single CA holds 80% or more of everything. - The B Ceiling: Where the Climb to an A Grade Stalls —
5.82 million domains score 80–89 but only 549,635 reach 90+. The biggest B-to-A gap is DMARC reporting: 34.4% of B-band domains fail it versus roughly 7% of A-band domains. - DMARC Gap: 87 Million Domains One Record From Safety —
86.9 million domains — 23.1% of 376.9M graded — have SPF but no DMARC record: one free DNS TXT entry away from an anti-spoofing policy. The internet's largest cheap-to-close security deficit. - Cheap Domains, Cheap Security? Budget TLDs vs the Rest —
88.8% of 19.2M graded budget-TLD domains score F — versus 72.4% on .com and 33.7% on .ch. On .top, 96.1% fail and 51.5% of scanned names were dead at scan time. - Do Registry Rules Work? .bank 3.1% F vs .com 72.4% —
3.1% of .bank domains grade F versus 72.4% on .com — a 23× gap. Registry mandates move exactly what they name: vetted-only .pharmacy grades 84.5% F, worse than the open market. - New gTLD Ghost Towns: Where a Third of Domains Are Dead —
36% of 63.8 million new-gTLD domains are dead or unreachable — 2.6 times the legacy-gTLD rate. In .bond, 87.3% of the namespace is gone. Only 58.4% of new-gTLD domains were alive enough to receive a security grade. - Domain Dark Matter: 64 Million Delegated, Empty Domains —
63,840,407 domains — 14.8% of 432 million scanned — have working DNS delegation but no website and no mail route. More than one in three registered domains never produced a gradable scan at all. - IPv6-Only Domains: 80,737 Sites Living Without IPv4 —
Just 80,737 of 376.9 million graded domains publish only an IPv6 address — 0.021%, one in 4,668. Even among the 67.4 million domains that already have IPv6, only one in 834 has dropped IPv4. - Parked Domains: 91% Grade F Across 2.1 Million Measured —
91.3% of 2,147,113 parked domains grade F — compared to 78.3% across the general web. Exactly one parked domain out of 2.1 million earns an A. Parking provider defaults, not owner choices, set the grade. - The Hosting League Table: Domain Security by DNS Provider —
GoDaddy carries 52.4 million domains at 82.9% grade F, and 52% of every A-grade domain on the internet sits behind Cloudflare alone. We attributed 376.9 million graded domains to their DNS provider. - Does Cloudflare Make You Safer? 41.9M Domains Graded —
67.7% of the 41.9 million Cloudflare-fronted domains still score an F — virtually identical to the rest of the web — yet Cloudflare holds 48.7% of all A+ grades. August 2026 census data across 205 million HTTP responses. - DMARC Subdomain Policy: 1.3 Million sp= Back Doors —
1,313,312 domains enforce DMARC at the apex then explicitly exempt their entire subdomain namespace — including 459,577 that reached p=reject and then set sp=none. We parsed 75.5 million records to find the back doors. - DMARC pct Tag: 476,000 Domains Water Down Enforcement —
476,465 domains publish DMARC quarantine or reject — then weaken it with a pct value below 100. We parsed 75.5 million DMARC records to find out where the dials are set. - Zombie MX Records: Mail Routed to Dead Domains —
At least 43,723 dead or unreachable domains still publish mail-routing MX records — a floor figure, not an estimate. The mail is a potential account-takeover risk. August 2026 census. - Null MX Adoption 2026: 14.5 Million Domains Opt Out —
14,455,076 domains publish a null MX record — only 7.0% of the 207 million no-mail domains we graded. RFC 7505 adoption, measured across 376.9M domains. - Broken DNSSEC: 157,064 Domains Are Invisibly Down —
157,064 domains have broken DNSSEC chains — a hard SERVFAIL for every validating resolver. That's 1 in 709 signed domains, and owners can't see the failure. August 2026 census. - Single-Nameserver Domains: One Record from Oblivion —
290,673 domains run on a single nameserver — a complete single point of failure for website, email, and every DNS-dependent service. August 2026 census of 376.9M domains. - SOA Records: The Internet's Most Neglected Setting —
50.5% of 275 million measured domains carry an SOA retry or expire timer outside recommended ranges — the DNS record nobody has ever reviewed. - End-of-Life Software Census: 6.6 Million Servers Admit It —
6,635,647 end-of-life software banners counted across 376.9 million domains — including 2.36 million still running PHP 7.4, nearly four years after its last security patch. - Secure by Default: the Server Software Security Showdown —
Netlify sends HSTS on 95.9% of its sites; Apache on 7.0% — a 13.7× gap across 191.7 million responses showing how your hosting choice, not your security team, determines what protection your users receive. - Referrer-Policy: the Privacy Header 91% of the Web Forgot —
91.4% of 231.9 million HTTP responses carry no Referrer-Policy — leaving browser defaults to decide whether full URLs, search terms, and path-embedded tokens are shared with every third-party server a page contacts. - HSTS Adoption 2026: The Half-Locked Door —
56.2% of 329.9 million HTTPS domains send no HSTS header — and only 4.1% of those that do publish a preload-ready policy — leaving most of the encrypted web unprotected against SSL-stripping attacks. - Content Security Policy Adoption in 2026: the 8.0% Web —
Only 8.0% of 257.6 million measurable domains serve an effective Content-Security-Policy — and 48.3% of those who do land on just two identical scores, revealing platform defaults rather than deliberate security choices. - TLS 1.3 by Country: Which TLDs Win on Defaults (2026) —
94.9% of 231.5 million TLS-completing domains negotiate TLS 1.3 — but South Korea's .kr lags at 73.3% and the US .gov TLD at 77.0%, revealing how infrastructure age, not national wealth, determines encryption quality. - Cipher Suites in 2026: What Strong Encryption Really Means —
Two cipher suites carried 94.33% of 212 million measured TLS handshakes in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census — and RC4, 3DES, and export-grade ciphers appeared zero times. - Wildcard Certificates: 28.5% of the TLS Web on One Key —
28.5% of the TLS web — 66,011,927 of 231.5 million domains measured in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census — runs on wildcard certificates, sharing one private key across every subdomain. - Self-Signed Certificates: The 3.3 Million-Domain Census —
3,306,642 of 231.5 million TLS certificates observed in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census are self-signed — including 375,842 still carrying the 'Internet Widgits Pty Ltd' OpenSSL example default. - Expired SSL Certificates: 5.2 Million Sites Still Serving —
5,157,928 live websites were serving an expired TLS certificate at the moment of the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census sweep — 47.8% of those certificates had been expired for over a year. - RSA vs ECDSA in 2026: Measuring the Web's Key Migration —
425,004 live TLS certificates are still signed with MD5, and RSA still holds 59.3% of 231.5 million keys measured in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census — the key migration is real but moving at the speed of defaults, not advice. - The 90-Day Web: Certificate Lifetimes in 2026 —
67.7% of 231.5 million TLS certificates observed in the defaults.exposed August 2026 Domain Security Census were issued for exactly 90 days — the annual certificate is collapsing, and the 47-day era is next.