hak5.org

We performed a comprehensive analysis of hak5.org on 2026-06-30. The website returned an HTTP 200 status code with a server response time of 7530ms. The page is served over HTTP/2 protocol with Gzip compression enabled, achieving approximately 60.0% size reduction. The total page weight is 463 KB, and the site is served behind a CDN (Content Delivery Network). The website uses a secure HTTPS connection with a valid SSL certificate issued by Let's Encrypt (DV type). The connection is encrypted using TLS 1.3 with the TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suite and ECDSA-SHA384 signature algorithm. The certificate covers 1 domain(s) (Subject Alternative Names) and expires on 2026-09-02, which is 64 days from now. The security headers analysis reveals a score of 70/100 (good). The following security headers are properly configured: Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options. However, the site is missing Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy, which could expose the site and its users to cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, and other web-based attacks. Our technology detection scan identified 9 technologies across 9 categories powering hak5.org. The detected stack includes Shopify, Vite, Microsoft Clarity, Shop Pay, reCAPTCHA v3, Heroku, Google Fonts, YouTube Embed, and jQuery. The primary e-commerce platform is Shopify. Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, hak5.org receives an overall trust score of 82/100, classified as "Very Likely Safe".

After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, hak5.org receives a trust score of 82/100, which places it in the "Very Likely Safe" category. This score is calculated by evaluating multiple factors including SSL certificate validity, domain registration history, email authentication protocols, security header configuration, and blacklist status across major threat intelligence databases. The analysis identified several positive trust signals: a valid HTTPS connection protecting data in transit, HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) enforcement preventing protocol downgrade attacks, a valid SSL certificate issued by Let's Encrypt with 64 days until expiration, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, DMARC email authentication with a none policy, DNSSEC providing authenticated DNS responses, and a well-established domain registered for over 21.0 years, indicating long-term commitment and legitimacy. Areas of concern include: missing Referrer-Policy, potentially leaking URL information to third parties and the domain's WHOIS information is hidden behind a privacy service, making it harder to verify the owner's identity. While these issues don't necessarily indicate malicious intent, they represent areas where the website's security posture could be improved. We checked hak5.org against 8 major blacklist databases including Google Safe Browsing, Phishtank, Urlhaus, Openphish, Dnsfilter, Spamhaus Dbl, Surbl, and Virustotal. The domain passed all 8 checks with a clean status, meaning it has not been flagged for phishing, malware distribution, spam, or other malicious activities by any of the tested threat intelligence providers. The domain is registered through DreamHost, LLC based in CA, with a registration date of 2005-07-21 and expiration date of 2027-07-21.

Our technology detection engine scanned hak5.org and identified 9 distinct technologies across 9 categories. This analysis is performed by examining HTTP response headers, HTML source code patterns, JavaScript library fingerprints, CSS framework signatures, and DNS records. Ecommerce: Shopify — powers the online store and shopping functionality for hak5.org. Build Tool: Vite — bundles and optimizes the JavaScript and CSS assets for hak5.org. Analytics: Microsoft Clarity — tracks visitor behavior and provides traffic insights for hak5.org. Payments: Shop Pay — processes payment transactions for hak5.org. Security: reCAPTCHA v3 — provides security features like bot detection and CAPTCHA for hak5.org. Hosting: Heroku — provides the server infrastructure for hak5.org. Fonts: Google Fonts — delivers web fonts for typography for hak5.org. Video: YouTube Embed — provides video hosting and playback for hak5.org. JavaScript Library: jQuery — provides utility functions and DOM manipulation for hak5.org.

hak5.org delivers its homepage in 7530ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 463 KB, and we detected 475 resource requests loading assets from 20 third-party domains. A high number of third-party domains can significantly impact page load time due to additional DNS lookups and TLS handshakes required for each domain. The website uses Gzip compression for text-based assets, achieving an estimated 60.0% reduction in transfer size. This reduces bandwidth usage and improves page load times, especially for visitors on slower connections. Asset minification status: 1 out of 9 CSS files and 5 out of 27 JavaScript files are minified. Minifying the remaining 30 unminified file(s) could further reduce page weight by 10-30% for those assets. Minification is a best practice that reduces download sizes without affecting functionality. The site is served through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which caches static assets at edge servers around the world. This means visitors from different geographic regions receive content from the nearest edge server, significantly reducing latency. CDN usage is particularly important for websites with a global audience, as it can reduce page load times by 40-60% for distant visitors. From an environmental perspective, each page view of hak5.org produces approximately 0.23g of CO₂, earning a carbon rating of B. This places the website among the cleanest on the web, demonstrating efficient use of server resources and optimized content delivery. For reference, the average web page produces about 0.5g of CO₂ per page view. The page weight of 463 KB is the primary factor in this calculation. Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for hak5.org. This typically means the site doesn't have enough real-world Chrome user traffic to generate statistically significant field data, or the domain is not included in the CrUX dataset. Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) are important Google ranking factors that measure real user experience.

hak5.org resolves to the IPv4 address 23.227.38.65, but does not support IPv6. IPv6 adoption is increasingly important as IPv4 address space becomes exhausted, and some ISPs and regions are transitioning to IPv6-only connectivity. The domain has 1 A record(s) configured. The domain name system is managed by 2 name servers: dilbert.ns.cloudflare.com and elma.ns.cloudflare.com. Having 2 name servers provides good redundancy — if one fails, the others can continue serving DNS queries. The choice of name servers often indicates the DNS hosting provider or CDN service being used. Email for hak5.org is handled by Google Workspace with 5 MX records configured: aspmx.l.google.com, alt1.aspmx.l.google.com, and alt2.aspmx.l.google.com and 2 more. Multiple MX records provide failover redundancy — if the primary mail server is unavailable, email will be routed to the next available server. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is configured, which specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of this domain. This helps prevent email spoofing and improves email deliverability. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is configured with a none policy — a monitoring-only setting that doesn't enforce any action on unauthorized emails. DKIM was not detected. Without DKIM, recipients cannot cryptographically verify that emails claiming to be from this domain are authentic. DNSSEC is enabled for hak5.org, providing an additional layer of security by cryptographically signing DNS records. This prevents DNS cache poisoning and man-in-the-middle attacks that could redirect visitors to malicious websites. The domain is registered through DreamHost, LLC (CA). It was first registered on 2005-07-21 and is set to expire on 2027-07-21, making it 21.0 years old. Our subdomain enumeration scan discovered 3 active subdomains for hak5.org: mail.hak5.org, shop.hak5.org, and www.hak5.org. Active subdomains can reveal the organization's infrastructure, including development environments, API endpoints, and third-party service integrations.

The homepage of hak5.org contains 1,072 words of visible text content. This is a substantial amount of content that provides good opportunities for search engine indexing. The page is structured with 14 H2 headings, 0 H3 headings, 0 H4 headings, 0 H5, and 3 H6 headings. The page includes 199 images. 196 images (98%) are missing alt text attributes, which is a significant concern for both accessibility and SEO. Screen readers rely on alt text to describe images to visually impaired users, and search engines use alt text to understand image content. Only 2% of images have proper alt text — we recommend adding descriptive alt attributes to all images. The link structure consists of 178 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 42 external links pointing to third-party websites. The high number of internal links suggests a well-interconnected site structure, which helps search engines discover and crawl all pages efficiently. There are 27 external JavaScript files, 9 CSS stylesheets, and 1 iframes on the page. The site implements the following web standards and features: XML Sitemap (helps search engines discover all pages), robots.txt (controls search engine crawling behavior), and Schema.org structured data (Organization, SearchAction, and WebSite). We detected the following payment methods accepted on hak5.org: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay. Offering multiple payment options including credit cards and digital wallets improves customer trust and can increase conversion rates. The website has social media presence across 4 platforms: Facebook (@technolust), Twitter (@hak5), Instagram (@hak5gear), and Github (@sindresorhus). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.

The title tag for hak5.org is well-optimized at 42 characters: "Pentest Tools & Media | Hak5 Official Site". The length falls within the ideal range for Google search results, ensuring the full title is displayed without truncation. The meta description is 270 characters (slightly long): "Hak5 — industry leading hacker tools & award winning hacking shows for red teams, pentesters, cyber security students an...". Google typically displays up to 155-160 characters of the meta description in search results. A compelling meta description with a clear call-to-action can significantly improve click-through rates from search results. The canonical url is correctly set to https://shop.hak5.org/, preventing duplicate content issues, the page language is declared as en, the meta robots directive is set to index,follow, and a favicon is configured. Open Graph meta tags are configured with 4/4 recommended fields: OG title ("Pentest Tools & Media | Hak5 Official Site..."), OG description, OG image (social sharing thumbnail), OG type (website). These tags control how the page appears when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms that support the Open Graph protocol. A Twitter Card of type summary is configured, which controls how links appear when shared on Twitter/X. The "summary" type displays a large image preview, which typically generates higher engagement rates than the basic card type. The site implements Schema.org structured data with the following types: Organization, SearchAction, and WebSite. Structured data helps search engines understand the page content and can enable rich results (featured snippets, knowledge panels, star ratings) in Google search results, which can significantly increase click-through rates.