U of A affected by global cyberattack, unsure of scope of breach

The University of Alberta is warning students to stay off Canvas Cloud after a cyber attack.

The University of Alberta (U of A) was one of thousands of schools impacted by a cyberattack on the learning management system Canvas on Thursday.

“The university is awaiting further details from Instructure regarding the scope of the impact on U of A data, including the volume and types of information involved,” the school said in a statement on its website.

“While we are working to confirm this, we do know that data such as passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers and financial information is not stored in the U of A’s Canvas and will not have been exposed.”

Things like grades, course notes, assignments, and more are managed in Canvas.

Instructure, the company behind the software, says the incident has been contained.

The U of A is one of 9,000 schools affected globally, the school said.

Canvas was offline for several hours during the attack.

ShinyHunters has been tied to other attacks, including on Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary.