Canvas outage impacts thousands of schools, universities: Hacker group reportedly takes credit

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A screenshot from the University of Florida's Canvas page.

Canvas, the learning management platform used by thousands of universities across the U.S., experienced a major outage on Thursday. Days earlier, the platform reported a major "cybersecurity incident."

Now, a hacking group is reportedly taking credit for both incidents and threatening to leak students' data.

Canvas outage

What we know:

Students began reporting outages Thursday evening, with many students unable to access the platform used for grades, assignments, and other class materials.

In a statement from the University of Florida to its students Thursday, the outage is "affecting more than 8,000 educational institutions worldwide."

Thursday's system outage comes just days after Canvas' parent company Instructure reported a "cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor." The company later said it had deployed software patches to try and plug the leak, and was investigating.

On Thursday, Instructure announced that in response to the incident, it placed Canvas and its beta and test platforms in maintenance mode, but "anticipate being up soon."

Canvas outage impacts final exams, summer semester

Why you should care:

The timing of the outage comes as many schools are in the middle of final exams. 

Hacker group claims responsibility, threatens data leak

Big picture view:

Hacker group ShinyHunters has reportedly claimed responsibility for both Thursday's outage and the incident earlier in the week.

Students at several schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas - San Antonio, reported seeing a black screen when trying to log on to Canvas on Thursday night with a message from the group.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again)," the message read.

The group shared a list of the affected schools, and went on to threaten to leak students' data, giving schools a May 12 deadline to cooperate with their demands.

When will Canvas be back up?

What's next:

It's not clear when Canvas will be available to students and faculty again.

What you can do:

Instructure is sharing the latest updates about the situation on its Status page.