According to a report at The College Fix, “Canvas, the learning management software used on campuses across the country, experienced nationwide outages as a result of a major cyberattack Thursday, stalling final grades and postponing exams at Liberty University and other institutions.”
Canvas is an important platform used by many colleges, so this was likely a major inconvenience.
“Students who accessed the platform encountered a ransom note (pictured) from the hacking group ShinyHunters. The note threatened to leak personal information to the dark web if institutions did not negotiate settlements by the end of the day, May 12.”
The platform was back to normal by Friday despite the chaos that ensued up until then.
Yet again, we see how interconnected technology is and how certain technologies, while helpful, are also a double-edged sword.
“At Liberty, a private evangelical Christian institution in Virginia, students expressed worries about the impact that the outage would have on assignments and final semester grades.”
“I really wanted an A in my class, and now I can’t turn in a 200-point assignment,” sophomore Wes Richardson told The College Fix on Thursday during the outage. “And it’s kinda hitting me, I want my GPA to go up.”
Other schools impacted by this outage included “Harvard, MIT, Stanford,” and others.
“Shortly after the attack, some Liberty students reported seeing an alternative Canvas login page when accessing the site. University administrators warned students that the page could be fraudulent and urged them not to log in.”
At Liberty, finals were postponed, and security precautions were taken.
Hacking and Cyberterror remain threats to America and our schools, as is evident by this cyberbreach.
“The company Instructure told CBS News in a statement Friday that it took Canvas offline after realizing that hackers had “made changes to the pages that appeared when some students and teachers were logged in,” exploiting an issue related to its Free-For-Teacher accounts.”
“ShinyHunters is an extortion group with a history of breaching company websites and online databases via misconfigurations and AI-powered voice phishing attacks, according to an article at DC Control, a tech company. The group demands ransoms and leaks data on dark web forums if unpaid, totaling over 73 million records stolen, tech news site ZD NET reports.”
This underscores that our Infrastructure and cybersecurity remain vulnerable to hacking and breaches, both foreign and domestic.
