Canvas cyberattack disrupts universities as ShinyHunters threatens massive data leak

An attack on the popular Instructure Canvas learning management system has caused major disruptions for schools and universities in the US, just as students gear up for finals. This poses a serious threat to the personal data of millions of students and teachers.

Multiple institutions reported outages affecting the web-based Canvas platform on Thursday, with users encountering ransom messages posted directly to school Canvas homepages. According to Instructure, Canvas serves more than 30 million active users worldwide. The company’s public status page showed that while most services had been restored by late Thursday, Canvas Beta and Canvas Test remained in maintenance mode.

The ransomware and extortion group ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for the attack. In a ransom message published by Ransomware.live, the group alleged it had accessed data belonging to more than 275 million people across nearly 9,000 schools and educational institutions. The group further threatened to ...