Overview

An education platform widely used by schools in Southern California and across the United States has experienced significant disruptions due to a cyberattack. The incident has affected the Canvas education platform developed by Instructure, impacting numerous educational institutions, including California State University campuses and UCLA.

The cyberattack reportedly began over a week ago, culminating in outages of the Canvas system on Thursday, which coincided with a critical period for students taking final exams.

Key details

  • The cyberattack targeted Instructure, the developer of the Canvas education platform.
  • Canvas is utilized by California State University campuses, UCLA, and thousands of schools nationwide.
  • The attack started more than a week prior to the reported outages.
  • On Thursday, users experienced significant disruptions in accessing the Canvas system.
  • The UCLA Chief Information Security Officer confirmed the outage and noted that the vendor was working on a resolution.
  • Other University of California campuses also reported being affected by the outage.
  • The California State University system announced that Canvas was down across all its campuses and the Chancellor's Office.
  • Instructure is actively gathering information and working to restore systems.
  • The situation is described as fluid, with ongoing updates expected as more information becomes available.
  • Students were using the Canvas system to take final exams during the outages.
  • Some users received a message from a group called Shiny Hunters, claiming to have captured data of millions of users.
  • The message from Shiny Hunters threatened to release the data unless a settlement was arranged with the hacking group.

Context

The cyberattack on the Canvas platform comes at a critical time for many students who rely on the system for their educational needs, particularly during final exam periods.

What happens next

Instructure is investigating the incident and is focused on resolving the issues affecting the Canvas platform while keeping educational institutions updated on the situation.

What we don't know yet

Details regarding the extent of the data breach, the specific number of affected users, and the identity of the hacking group are not confirmed.