Popular higher ed system Canvas hacked, putting millions of students personal data at risk

A massive cyberattack that crippled the Canvas online learning platform as finals were getting underway at many universities could leave them scrambling for as long as a month — and expose the education software giant to major legal and financial fallout, cybersecurity experts told The Post.The breach of the popular learning platform, owned by Instructure, disrupted coursework, exams and student communications at universities and school systems across the US and beyond after hackers linked to the notorious ShinyHunters group said they infiltrated the system and exposed sensitive user data.The group targeted almost 9,000 schools and accessed data from over 275 million people, according to a ransom letter shared online.Instructure said names, email addresses, student ID numbers and private messages were compromised, though it added that there was no evidence passwords, Social Security numbers or financial data were exposed.Now schools are facing a daunting recovery process that could stretch weeks beyond the initial outage.“The big question is how could schools have prevented this,” said Don Beeler, head of TDR Technology Solutions, a New York-based school cybersecurity and threat-prevention company.“There is technology available that could reduce the impact on schools.

The ones that have it will be up and running faster.”Beeler said institutions may have to assume the breach spread beyond Canvas itself and infected their internal systems.“Depending on the breach, most schools will need to assume this has impacted other internal systems,” he told The Post.“Depending on the school’s cybersecurity footprint this could mean it could take one to four weeks to resolve.They may have to shut down every computer and clean it before turning anything back on.”The cyberattack came during one of the most stressful times of the academic year, with everyone from profs and adjuncts to students relying on Canvas for final exams, grading and assignment submission...