Canvas System Is Online After a Cyberattack Disrupted Thousands of Schools

"Instructure, the company behind Canvas, said in an update late Thursday that the system was available for most users. Instructure also said it confirmed that the unauthorized actor exploited an issue related to its Free-For-Teacher accounts. The company has temporarily shut down those accounts. Instructure did not say whether it paid a ransom nor has it said what happened with the compromised data."

"Out of an abundance of caution, we immediately took Canvas offline to contain access and further investigate. Instructure discovered the unauthorized actor involved in our ongoing security incident made changes to the pages that appeared when some students and teachers were logged in. The company said the system was available for most users after the outage."

"Across academia, the outage set off panic and confusion as students and faculty members found themselves locked out of a platform they rely on to manage grades and access course notes and assignments. Colleges scrambled to reschedule final exams as students lost any way to access materials they needed to study. Tens of thousands of students studying for final exams around the world regained access after the system was knocked offline."

"Elizabeth Polo was in a creative writing class at the University of Maryland late Thursday afternoon when a classmate shouted, "Canvas got hacked." A message from a hacking collective flashed on her computer screen. "Our whole class just like was like freaking out about it," said Polo, a junior. "Our poor professor was trying to get everyone to calm down but it was just kind of chaos.""

A cyberattack knocked the Canvas learning system offline, preventing tens of thousands of students worldwide from accessing grades, course notes, and assignments during final exam preparation. Students and faculty experienced panic and confusion as they were locked out of a platform used for academic management. Colleges scrambled to reschedule final exams because students lost access to study materials. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, reported that it discovered an unauthorized actor made changes to pages shown to some logged-in students and teachers. Instructure took Canvas offline to contain access and investigate. The company said the actor exploited an issue related to Free-For-Teacher accounts and temporarily shut down those accounts. Instructure did not disclose whether a ransom was paid or what happened to compromised data.

Read at SecurityWeek