A cyber attack struck several universities and schools in the United States, Canada, and Australia, causing chaos and major disruptions during the high-stakes end-of-year season. The hacking group ShinyHunters allegedly claimed responsibility for the attack, which took the academic software Canvas offline this week.
By late Thursday, Instructure, the company that owns Canvas, posted an update stating that Canvas was available for most users, but some universities still reported outages on Friday. The cyber attack targeted an estimated 9,000 institutions globally.
The University of Sydney told students on Friday that Canvas was unavailable and instructed them not to attempt to log in. The university acknowledged the disruption at a critical time in the semester, affecting coursework and examinations.
Penn State University informed students that no one had access to Canvas and that a resolution was unlikely within 24 hours. The university canceled some exams scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
The University of British Columbia in Vancouver informed students that Canvas was unavailable due to a cyber breach of its parent company Instructure and advised them to log out immediately. The University of Toronto also reported being impacted.
Students at the University of California, Los Angeles struggled to submit assignments online, and the University of Chicago temporarily disabled its Canvas page after reports of targeting. The Chicago Maroon published a screenshot of a ransom demand from ShinyHunters, urging the university to negotiate privately to prevent data release.
Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emisoft, told the Associated Press that threats began on Sunday with deadlines on Thursday and May 12. Discussions regarding extortion payments could be ongoing.
On the same day, top US Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the administration urging stronger defenses against cyber risks in the age of rapidly developing AI. He called for immediate help for states and localities before Americans face outages and attacks that could put lives and livelihoods at risk.
Source: www.bbc.com