Cyberattack hits Canvas, impacting universities nationwide

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Universities across the country are experiencing a widespread outage and an alleged cyberattack affecting the online learning platform Canvas.

According to CNN, this is the second data breach this month among schools and universities. Hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for both attacks.

On the University of Colorado Colorado Springs website, the following note appears:

OIT is aware that Canvas is unavailable and the webpage temporarily displayed a message regarding a security breach of Canvas and is now displaying a maintenance message. OIT is working with the vendor to investigate and resolve the issue. This incident is impacting Canvas instances worldwide.

CNN reports that a message from the hacker was temporarily displayed on the webpage, which said, “ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again),” and went on to say that instead of the company contacting the hackers to resolve the issue the first time, they "ignored us and did some ‘security patches.’”

According to the company, "Instruction", which owns the learning platform, the website is currently in "maintenance mode," and they are investigating the issue.

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