Canvas Learning Platform Breach Affects Thousands of Schools, Including Mohawk College

Mohawk College says only non-sensitive information such as usernames, email addresses and messages were accessed in a Canvas breach that also affected thousands of other schools. The system is referred to at Mohawk College as MyCanvas. It connects students with their instructors.

In a statement, Sean Coffey, a spokesperson for Mohawk College, said the data affected included usernames, email addresses and messages. "Information such as passwords, single sign-on credentials, birth dates, home addresses, and financial information was not affected," Coffey said. He added that no other systems at the college were impacted and that students and staff were kept up to date.

The company behind Canvas, Instructure, said there was unauthorized activity on April 29 accessed through a type of teacher account. The company revoked that access and took the platform offline to investigate after more activity was detected. Thousands of colleges, universities and some K-12 schools use Canvas.

According to Instructure, the data involved may include full names, email addresses, student numbers and personal messages. ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack. The group is a hacker organization behind breaches at Ticketmaster and Google's Salesforce database.

Instructure said earlier this week it reached an agreement with the hacking group. Instructure received confirmation the data was destroyed. " Cbc reported the details of both the college's statement and Instructure's response to the April 29 breach.