Canvas, the cloud-based learning management system used by more than 8,000 colleges and universities, including all top ten colleges in the U.S., is being held for ransom. A group called Shinyhunters has claimed responsibility for the hack and has given Canvas’ parent company, Instructure, until May 12 to reach a settlement, or else “everything is leaked.”
Canvas outages have been reported nationwide
There’s no word on how many schools have been affected, but reports of students being unable to access Canvas are coming in from universities and colleges all over the country. Over the last half an hour, complaints of Canvas being down have gone from nearly none to over 8,000 on Down Detector.
Credit: Stephen Johnson
A similar breach of Instructure took place in late April or early May, and the company confirmed that names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and private messages exchanged between users were exposed by Shinyhunters, but said there was no evidence of compromised passwords, dates of birth, social security numbers, or financial information.
Instructure updated its software on May 2, saying that it had deployed patches, increased monitoring, and taken other measures meant to contain the damage, a fact referenced by ShinyHunters in the message left for Canvas users:
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