Students of various ages all across the country had their finals week turned upside down during a recent cyberattack that raised a lot of eyebrows.
Last week, people were puzzled and concerned when Canvas, one of today’s leading education apps and sites, was hacked, breaching the data of students and interrupting their schedules. Days after a data breach put students’ personal information at risk, users were impacted once again when the criminal hacking group, Shinyhunters, took over the learning platform. Read more about the situation and how users reacted below.
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Canvas Is Hacked By A Cybercrimial Group
There are many students nationwide who have attended college or high school in the last five years who know what Canvas is. A convenient tool, the site, which also functions as an app, serves as an educational portal where students can message teachers, download assignments, submit tests and papers, etc. For institutions like colleges, Canvas can be especially important around this time of year, given that many are in the thick of finals season.
After Canvas's parent platform, Instructure, reported a "cybersecurity incident" on May 1st, later that week, on Thursday, students around the country suddenly reported issues of being unable to log into their Canvas accounts or being logged out in the middle of studying. From colleges to full-blown school districts, students from New Jersey to Utah experienced disruptions that prevented them from downloading homework, studying, submitting final papers, and more.
It turned out to be the second data breach in one month performed by ShinyHunters, a cybercriminal group that's been around for the last six to seven years. They're known for performing large-scale data breaches, using extortion, and taking stolen user data to sell on the black market. On the platform, the group left a ransom note, stating they had breached the data of 275M Canvas users, had access to their "private messages," and gave schools a deadline of May 12th to "negotiate a settlement," as reported by CNN.
Students, Parents & Faculty Express Concern Amid The Canvas Hacking
As the issue progressed and more students dealt with an inconvenient and rather concerning pause in their education, Instructure put the platform in "maintenance mode" before announcing it was "fully back online and available" at the end of last week.
This incident had students, teachers, parents, and more expressing their fears and concerns online, considering the cybercriminal group expressed having access to their data, leaving comments on platforms like Reddit. Additionally, some expressed as far as this morning, still being logged out of Canvas.
"I just found out about this today," wrote a student on Reddit. "I'm so scared."
"Everyone was studying, but now has no access to class materials," added another. "Teachers don't know what to do."
"This sucks royally," wrote a student, as a parent commented, "My daughter is still locked out."
"Her school is trying to come up with a backup plan to finish the semester," they continued. "What a disaster."
According to CNN, the FBI has advised any students who were affected by the cyber attack to "not engage with anyone who claims to have their data, including by responding to demands or sending payments."
