technology
Canvas Outage Disrupts Learning Platform Used by Thousands of Schools
A ransomware attack on Instructure, the company behind the widely used learning management system Canvas, took the platform offline Thursday, affecting thousands of schools and universities in the U.S. and worldwide. The group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility, demanding cryptocurrency payments and threatening to leak billions of private records.
May 8, 7:15 AM·1m read6 sources
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A cyberattack took the Canvas learning management system offline on Thursday, affecting thousands of schools and universities as students prepared for final exams. The platform is used to manage grades, assignments, course notes and lecture videos. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, posted an update late Thursday night stating the system was now available for most users.
The outage impacted institutions including Penn State, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Columbia University, Union College, UCLA, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois Chicago and the University of Illinois, according to multiple reports.
Mississippi State was also affected. Penn State told students that no one had access to Canvas and that a resolution was not expected within the next 24 hours. The university canceled all tests scheduled for Thursday and Friday at its Pollock Testing Center.
Public school districts in areas such as Spokane, Washington, stated they were not aware of any sensitive data contained in the breach.
Instructure has not posted about the incident on its social media accounts. The company did not immediately provide further details on the cause or scope. No publicly released evidence has documented the scale of any data access or confirmed that ransomware demands were made or met.
Reports citing a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft described claims by a group known as ShinyHunters, but primary statements from affected universities and Instructure itself emphasized the service disruption without confirming specifics of the actor or data compromise.
The incident follows previous ransomware incidents targeting the education sector, including breaches at Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District. It also bears similarities to an earlier breach at PowerSchool, another provider of learning management tools. In that case, a college student in Massachusetts faced charges.
