Itch.io went down on Monday due to what those behind the indie games site say was a bogus phishing claim reported by Funko, a pop culture collectibles company.
“Trash ‘AI-powered’ software” is how Itch.io describes BrandShield, which Funko uses, and which generated the false report submitted to the store’s registrar (iWantMyName), resulting in the domain takedown.
BrandShield markets itself as an “AI-powered” service that protects brands from phishing, fraud, counterfeit products, trademark infringements, and other threats.
The problem with Itch.io availability was fixed the same day, but it remained unclear where exactly in the chain of events things went wrong; the indie games store said that the registrar “ignored” their response to what they consider a fake report, and instead disabled the domain.
A lot of “automation” seems to be involved, both on the side of the “brand protection” firm and the registrar, showcasing once again how error-prone such systems can be, costing sites time and money.
As the phishing report originated from BrandShield, it would seem the problem started with the company, however, it claims that it asked for just one allegedly infringing URL to be taken down, rather than the whole domain – and blamed “service providers” for that.
BrandShield CEO Yoav Keren reacted to the incident by saying that the “AI-driven” platform is detecting and analyzing threats, while decisions on what to do with that information then depend on a team of “cybersecurity threat hunters” and IP lawyers.
“We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from occurring,” Keren is quoted as stating.
Meanwhile, media reports used this as another opportunity to mention Bluesky, a social media platform that has recently been getting a lot of publicity.
One of the consequences of the Itch.io domain disruption was that the games marketplace customers eligible to use their profile URL for their Bluesky account had to wait until the domain was up again for that functionality to be restored.
It’s unclear what, if any connection there is between the fact that Itch.io only recently started offering this feature to everyone spending at least $10, and the domain trouble. But, Bluesky nevertheless got “a little mention” in some reports about the incident.
