Canvas platform partially restored services after cyberattack

Canvas, an online learning platform used by thousands of schools and universities worldwide, partially restored services on Friday following a major outage linked to a cyberattack, News.Az reports, citing Xinhua.

Earlier on Thursday, several U.S. universities, including the University of Michigan and Harvard University, notified students that the platform was unavailable due to the disruption.

The platform’s parent company, Instructure, later confirmed the incident after hours of downtime.

In a statement released Friday, the company said: “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 added that, “Out of an abundance of caution, we immediately took Canvas offline to contain access and further investigate.”

The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach and alleged it had accessed data belonging to more than 275 million users across nearly 9,000 educational institutions.

Instructure previously disclosed last week that it had experienced a “cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor,” and said it had brought in forensic experts to help limit the impact and investigate the breach.

According to Steve Proud, Instructure’s chief information security officer, the compromised data may have included personal details such as names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and messages exchanged within Canvas.

News.Az 

By Nijat Babayev