Colleges Canvas Hack

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO) — A data breach at Instructure, the company behind Canvas, has disrupted classrooms across Indiana during finals week.

Students at Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College opened Canvas on Thursday and found a ransom message from a hacking group called ShinyHunters. The hackers claim they have stolen a large amount of data and gave Instructure a deadline to negotiate this coming Tuesday.

The breach triggered a system-wide outage at Indiana University, blocking students from accessing grades and assignments. IU administrators in Bloomington immediately warned everyone to stop using their school credentials to log in while they investigate this. Ivy Tech Community College informed students and staff it “was not a breach of Ivy Tech’s internal systems or networks,” but the school was still affected. Instructure said the data possibly included names, emails, and private messages through the Canvas platform.

While Purdue University said they didn’t use it as its primary learning management system, thousands of other students are still waiting for the system to come back online.

Employees are urging students, parents, and staff to be careful of unsolicited emails or messages that show up from Canvas, even those asking for personal information or password resets. They also urge them to monitor accounts for suspicious activity.

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