A cyberattack on Canvas disrupted access for Indiana schools and 9,000 schools worldwide. The hack derailed finals preparation and exposed education's growing reliance on technology.
A system that thousands of schools and universities use was offline Thursday during a cyberattack. The outage created chaos as students tried to study for finals.
The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emisoft.
Instructure is the company behind Canvas. The company didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected. Billions of private messages and other records were accessed, Connolly said.
Indiana University confirmed it was affected by the breach.
"Canvas is experiencing a global outage that affects Indiana University and other educational institutions," the university said. "More updates and instructions will be
IU and many other schools are
Students quickly took to social media asking if others were unable to access Canvas. Many panicked that they could no longer view course materials to study for final exams.
Screenshots Connolly provided showed the group began threatening Sunday to leak the data. The group gave deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.
Universities and school districts quickly began notifying students and parents.
"This is being reported as a national-level cyber-security incident," the University of Iowa's College of Public Health director wrote. The school announced its online system was down.
Virginia Tech acknowledged the effect on final exams and other end-of-semester activities. The University of New Mexico sent a similar message to the campus community.
The University of Florida urged students to stay alert for phishing messages that appear to be from Canvas.
Some schools pushed back finals scheduled for Friday in response to the outage. The University of Texas at San Antonio was among them.
Rich in digitized data, the nation's schools are prime targets for criminal hackers. Past attacks have hit Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and United Kingdom. The group has been tied to other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation's Ticketmaster subsidiary.
