Infrastructure - https://va.gov BeaverCheck Audit

F

IPv6 Readiness

Action

IPv6 records exist but unreachable

FIX

IPv6 records exist but unreachable

IPv6 DNS records exist but server is not reachable

Having AAAA records but an unreachable server is worse than no AAAA — clients may experience delays before falling back to IPv4.

Got: 2600:8010:0:28::28:221

IPv6 connection error

Got: dial tcp6 [2600:8010:0:28::28:221]:443: connect: network is unreachable

IPv6 Misconfigured

AAAA Records 2600:8010:0:28::28:221 Connection UNREACHABLE

Having AAAA records but an unreachable server is worse than no AAAA — clients may experience delays before falling back to IPv4.

Why this matters

Advertising IPv6 (AAAA records) without a reachable server means IPv6-preferring clients silently fail every connection.

Learn more ▾

Modern browsers prefer IPv6 if AAAA exists (Happy Eyeballs algorithm). If the IPv6 server isn't reachable, browsers fall back to IPv4 — but with seconds of added latency per request. Either fix IPv6 reachability or remove the AAAA records.

Source: RFC 8305 (Happy Eyeballs)

D

CDN & Delivery

Action

No CDN detected

FIX

No CDN detected

A CDN can significantly improve load times for users around the world by caching content at edge nodes closer to them.

No CDN detected

Consider using a CDN to improve global delivery speed and reduce origin load.

B

CAA Records

No CAA records (any CA may issue certificates)

REVIEW

No CAA records (any CA may issue certificates)

No CAA records published

Without CAA records, any publicly-trusted CA can issue certificates for this domain. Adding a CAA record (`yourdomain. IN CAA 0 issue "letsencrypt.org"`) restricts issuance to CAs you authorize. Required by CAB Forum baseline since 2017; the default of 'any CA' is widely supported but is the broader attack surface for issuance fraud.

C

Reverse DNS

Action

0/2 IPs match cert SAN

REVIEW

0/2 IPs match cert SAN

PTR lookup failed for 152.130.96.221: lookup 152.130.96.221: no such host

No reverse DNS record set for this IP. Common on bare cloud-VM IPs without provider-side PTR; not a security issue.

PTR lookup failed for 2600:8010:0:28::28:221: lookup 2600:8010:0:28::28:221: no such host

No reverse DNS record set for this IP. Common on bare cloud-VM IPs without provider-side PTR; not a security issue.

B

URL Variants

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

REVIEW

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

Both www and non-www versions serve content

Got: Both variants return 200 Expected: One variant 301-redirects to the other

HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

200https://www.va.gov/

200https://va.gov/

Inconsistent — duplicate content risk

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://va.gov/ → https://va.gov:443/

Consistent

B

TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations

253 days until leaf cert expires — 3 issues to address

REVIEW

Certificate validity

253

days left

0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

Prefer TLS 1.3 — TLS 1.2 is acceptable but TLS 1.3 removes RSA key exchange and improves latency
Add includeSubDomains to the HSTS directive
Enable OCSP stapling on your TLS server to remove a CA roundtrip and protect user privacy

B

CDN Cache Observability

No CDN cache-status headers in the response

REVIEW

No CDN cache-status headers in the response

Without an X-Cache / CF-Cache-Status / X-Vercel-Cache / Age header, you can't tell from outside whether a request hit the cache or went to origin. Operationally important: enables debugging stale-content reports and verifying cache rules. Most managed CDN platforms emit at least one of these by default; absence often means the platform's diagnostic headers are stripped at an upstream proxy.

B

Operational Status Page

No status page link detected

REVIEW

No status page link detected

No operational status page link detected

Status pages communicate planned maintenance and incidents to users -- a hallmark of operationally-mature services. Most SaaS teams publish one via Atlassian Statuspage, Instatus, BetterUptime, or a self-hosted Cachet. Smaller sites legitimately don't need one; flagged as Info, not a failure.

A+

DNS Records

1 A records, 45 ms lookup

PASS

1 A records, 45 ms lookup

Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)

Got: 152.130.96.221

Single A record — no DNS redundancy

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Has 1 IPv6 (AAAA) record(s)

Got: 2600:8010:0:28::28:221

4 nameserver(s) configured

Got: ns1x.va.gov, ns2x.va.gov, ns3x.va.gov, ns4x.va.gov

1 mail exchanger(s) configured

SPF record present in TXT

DNS resolution time: 45 ms

Got: 45 ms

A	152.130.96.221
AAAA	2600:8010:0:28::28:221
CNAME	—
NS	ns1x.va.gov, ns2x.va.gov, ns3x.va.gov, ns4x.va.gov
MX	10 mx20.va.gov
TXT	MS=ms28494616 tbi14aj28g0up3db1th77u1h1s _44pf4890rcbprrl4m69yuzocued8hj3 _5ri78mzgbmvox0mvm8ou5wxkmpx9woh _w1ybjynlrsafrjumudrp5ilvgsom6hq _ymhmp4c6qowov1llhzi4znjsgw7klp9 m6SyqGL+aO06ndrOtI3kDiZQFVKqPWAGXV+ygrs7DMs= docusign=1df408c8-ae62-42aa-81fb-cbacef5c7561 docusign=31552c45-f8a2-4607-9542-acf2c7b6ddff webexdomainverification.4NWTE=159c226b-8398-4ffd-8683-22977242d145 google-site-verification=RkAwuvE_HJPBMMNduSFoIOZBXDdFYV8pyziOb8CoqUU iwIqL1PYelzu9mfBv8t6UAmaBw1PFaM5w0LM/0gDrTOHD9lq2P6biza3ebVIxm4PJbbupeZlfQMuJvET... adobe-idp-site-verification=021f36dcd17c888ff7efe04d03905876a7443340c8a69372bf05... SPF v=spf1 mx ip4:152.130.26.32/27 ip4:152.131.26.32/27 ip4:152.132.26.32/27 ip4:152...
CAA	Lookup not available with standard resolver

Resolved in 45 ms

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Why this matters

Single A record means a single point of failure — if that IP goes down, your site is unreachable until DNS TTL expires.

Learn more ▾

Add multiple A records for round-robin failover, or use a managed DNS provider with health-checked failover (Route 53, Cloudflare, NS1). Short TTL (60-300s) lets clients recover faster on outages.

Source: SRE practice / DNS architecture

A+

Subdomain Takeover

No subdomain takeover risk detected

PASS

No subdomain takeover risk detected

No CNAME record present

A+

DNSSEC

Signed and validating

PASS

Signed and validating

DNSSEC fully signed and chain validates (RSASHA256)

A+

Multi-Resolver DNS Speed

Mean 11ms across 3 resolvers (spread 20ms)

PASS

Mean 11ms across 3 resolvers (spread 20ms)

Cloudflare: 3ms

Got: 3ms via 1.1.1.1:53

Quad9: 7ms

Got: 7ms via 9.9.9.9:53

Google: 23ms

Got: 23ms via 8.8.8.8:53

A

Redirect Chain

1 redirect(s), 742 ms total

PASS

1 redirect(s), 742 ms total

Single redirect

Got: https://va.gov → https://www.va.gov/ (301)

WWW normalization redirect

Redirect overhead: 742 ms total

Got: 742 ms

https://va.gov

550 ms · HTTP/1.1

301

https://www.va.gov/

192 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#	URL	Status	Time	Protocol	Server
1	https://va.gov	301	550 ms	HTTP/1.1
2	https://www.va.gov/	200	192 ms	HTTP/1.1

See the visual redirect chain in the HTTP Probe tab →

A+

Crawlability

robots.txt present, sitemap with 2 URLs

PASS

robots.txt present, sitemap with 2 URLs

robots.txt is present

Got: 740 bytes

sitemap.xml is present

sitemap.xml is valid XML

sitemap.xml contains 2 entries

Sitemap index with 2 child sitemaps

robots.txt references sitemap

robots.txt 200 OK

Size 740 B Sitemaps referenced 3 User-agents Amazonbot, *, usasearch, Synapse Blocking No — crawling allowed

User-agent: usasearch
Allow: /

# existing disallow on va.gov (may not be needed)
User-agent: Synapse
Disallow: /

# block Amazon's AI training crawler
User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

# existing disallow from vets.gov
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /analytics-opt-out.html
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /drupal
Disallow: /covid19screen
Disallow: /sitemap.xml

# disallow WIP VAMCs
# make sure to add a trailing slash at the end of the path
# to prevent sub-directories from being indexed
# see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/create-robots-txt#useful-robots.txt-rules


# sitemap index
Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap-cb.xml
Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap-nb.xml

sitemap.xml 200 OK

Type Sitemap Index URLs 2 entries Valid XML Yes

Child Sitemaps:

A

Domain Intelligence

va.gov — via get.gov, 29 years old, hosted on VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US

PASS

va.gov — via get.gov, 29 years old, hosted on VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US

Domain expires in 85 days

Consider enabling auto-renewal to prevent accidental expiration.

Got: Expires Aug 4, 2026

DNSSEC is enabled

Registrar: get.gov

Registrar lock is NOT enabled

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Hosting: VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US

Got: AS29992

Domain expiry

79 days

August 4, 2026

SSL certificate

253 days

Issued by Sectigo Limited

Domain age

29 years

Registered October 2, 1997

DNSSEC

Enabled

Protects against DNS spoofing

Hosting

VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US

ASN AS29992

152.133.106.221

Registrar

get.gov

Unlocked 4 NS records

Expiry timeline

Today

+1 year

Domain expiry SSL expiry Danger zone (≤30 days)

Recommended actions

Renew the domain or enable auto-renewal to prevent accidental expiry
Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) to block unauthorized domain transfers

Registrar get.gov

Created October 2, 1997 (29 years ago)

Expires August 4, 2026 (2 months)

Last Updated January 12, 2026

Name Servers ns1x.va.gov, ns2x.va.gov, ns3x.va.gov, ns4x.va.gov

DNSSEC Enabled

Registrant REDACTED FOR PRIVACY

Hosting

IP Address 152.133.106.221

ASN AS29992 (VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US)

Provider VA-TMP-CORE - U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US

Data source: rdap (0.3s)

Consider enabling auto-renewal to prevent accidental expiration.

Why this matters

Domain expiry approaching — renew immediately and ensure auto-renew + alerting are configured.

Source: ICANN renewal policy

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Why this matters

Without registrar lock, an attacker who phishes your registrar credentials can transfer the domain in minutes — total brand hijack.

Learn more ▾

Registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited) requires extra verification before any transfer/update/delete. Every major registrar offers it free. Combined with 2FA on your registrar account, it's the strongest defense against domain hijacking.

Source: ICANN / domain-security best practice

A

HTTP Probe Timing

Total 660 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown

PASS

DNS Lookup

11 ms

TCP Connect

108 ms

TLS Handshake

233 ms

Time to First Byte

660 ms

Total Time

661 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 11 ms TCP Connect 108 ms TLS Handshake 233 ms Server Processing 308 ms Content Transfer 0 ms

A+

Health Check Endpoint

Health endpoint at https://va.gov/health (HTTP 200)

PASS

Health endpoint at https://va.gov/health (HTTP 200)

Public health endpoint at https://va.gov/health

Got: https://va.gov/health