Cyberattack hits Canvas system used by thousands of schools as finals loom

The University of Toronto campus is pictured on Wednesday, July 15, 2015. (The Canadian Press/Chris Young)

A system that thousands of schools and universities use was offline Thursday during a cyberattack, creating chaos as students tried to study for finals and underscoring education’s dependence on technology.

The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Instructure, the company behind the learning management system Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the system was taken down as a precaution or because the hackers knocked it offline.

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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, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said.

Screen shots he provided showed that the group began threatening Sunday to leak the trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.

Rich in digitized data, the nation’s schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files that not long ago were committed to paper in locked cabinets. Past attacks have hit Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Instructure has not posted about the attack on its social media.

Connolly said the Canvas attack is strikingly similar to a breach at PowerSchool, which also offers learning management tools. In that case a Massachusetts college student was charged.

Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to a other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary.

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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 director of information technology wrote in announcing that the school’s online system was down. “Hopefully we will have a resolution soon.”

Virginia Tech acknowledged in a notice to students that the administration was aware of the effect on final exams and other end-of-semester activities.

“Additional guidance will be shared soon via email and posted on the university status page,” the school wrote.

The student newspaper at Harvard reported that the system was down there, too. And public school districts also sought to reassure parents, with officials in Spokane, Washington, writing that they aren’t “aware of any sensitive data contained in this breach.”

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Heather Hollingsworth, The Associated Press