Canvas, a web-based learning management system used by thousands of schools and universities, is operational for some after an outage that began May 7.
University of Kentucky, Murray State University and Northern Kentucky University were among the colleges where students couldn’t access course materials following a security incident that resulted in a widespread outage. The incident also occurred during spring finals week for several schools.
The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the data breach at Instructure, the parent company and creator of the Canvas learning management system, USA TODAY reported. Here’s what users should know.
Is Canvas working again? Outage occurs during finals week for many schools
Instructure’s website said that “Canvas is now available for most users” by late morning May 7. DownDetector, however, is reporting that some users are still experiencing issues.
Canvas LMS, the platform as a whole, is currently listed as “under maintenance.”
Those affected can check Canvas’ status at status.instructure.com and visit instructure.com/incident_update for answers to FAQs about the data breach.
What is Canvas?
Canvas is a learning management system that is used by faculty and staff at several institutions to submit assignments, complete exams and finalize grades. It has more than 30 million active users worldwide and over 8,000 institutions as customers, USA TODAY reported.
What happened with Canvas? Why was there an outage?
ShinyHunters hackers have taken credit for the Instructure data breach. Instructure said they gained unauthorized access to Canvas by “exploiting an issue related to our Free-For-Teacher accounts.”
In a ransom letter shared on May 3 by Ransomware.live, a platform that tracks and monitors ransomware groups, ShinyHunters said it had accessed data from over 275 million people — including students, teachers and other staff — across nearly 9,000 schools worldwide.
ShinyHunters has a history of compromising global corporations, Reuters reported. In April, the hacking group said it had stolen nearly 80 million business records from video game developer Rockstar Games, the maker of Grand Theft Auto.
Instructure said there is no evidence that “passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information” were involved in the data breach. “Names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and messages among Canvas users,” however, were accessed by hackers.
Contributing: Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY, and Matthew Cupelli, Cincinnati Enquirer. Reporter Katie Wiseman contributed. Reach Marina Johnson at Marina.Johnson@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Widespread Canvas outage occurs after ShinyHunters hack. Is it back up?
