Canvas outage impacts thousands of schools, universities: Hacker group reportedly takes credit

article

A screenshot from the University of Florida's Canvas page.

WASHINGTON - Canvas, the learning management platform used by thousands of universities across the U.S., experienced a major outage on Thursday. Days earlier, the platform reported a major "cybersecurity incident."

Now, a hacking group is reportedly taking credit for both incidents and threatening to leak students' data.

Canvas outage

What we know:

Students began reporting outages Thursday evening, with many students unable to access the platform used for grades, assignments, and other class materials.

Locally, both the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech reported they were part of the outage.

In a statement from the University of Florida to its students Thursday, the outage is "affecting more than 8,000 educational institutions worldwide."

Thursday's system outage comes just days after Canvas' parent company Instructure reported a "cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor." The company later said it had deployed software patches to try and plug the leak, and was investigating.

On Thursday, Instructure announced that in response to the incident, it placed Canvas and its beta and test platforms in maintenance mode, but "anticipate being up soon."

Canvas outage impacts final exams, summer semester

Why you should care:

The timing of the outage comes as many schools, including Virginia Tech, are in the middle of final exams. In an update Thursday night, VT announced that it was postponing exams scheduled for Friday, May 8, to Sunday, May 10.

Other schools, like the University of Florida, begin summer classes as early as next week, and are advising students to look out for instructions from individual professors, especially if the system is down for an extended period.

Hacker group claims responsibility, threatens data leak

Big picture view:

Hacker group ShinyHunters has reportedly claimed responsibility for both Thursday's outage and the incident earlier in the week.

Students at several schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas - San Antonio, reported seeing a black screen when trying to log on to Canvas on Thursday night with a message from the group.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again)," the message read.

The group shared a list of the affected schools, and went on to threaten to leak students' data, giving schools a May 12 deadline to cooperate with their demands.

When will Canvas be back up?

What's next:

It's not clear when Canvas will be available to students and faculty again.

What you can do:

Instrucutre is sharing the latest updates about the situation on its Status page.