Nearly 9000 public school systems and universities across the country are impacted by a nationwide online hack of their Canvas sites. On Thursday, May 8th, a hacking group called ShinyHunters took control of data belonging to 275 million people and is threatening to release it.
Schools across Wake County are updating their schedules and making adjustments to their curriculum to adjust to the inability to access Canvas. But it’s not just high schools; top universities like Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Georgetown have all been affected.
Before the Canvas site was set into maintenance mode and made unavailable for access, the ShinyHunters left an ominous message. The note has been reported by numerous users when they tried to reach Canvas on Thursday. The ShinyHunters threatened to leak all the data if schools do not respond by May 12th.
The inconvenience has forced Green Level teachers to make adjustments to their lesson plans, showcasing Green Level’s reliance on Canvas. Economics and Personal Finance teacher Eddie Wasdell was immediately impacted by the hack.
Wasdell said, “I had a student reach out to me last night that was trying to study our slides for the content check today. I realized it’s not fair to test them on something they can’t study for, so I rescheduled the content check until Canvas is back up.”
Wasdell isn’t the only teacher having to adjust on the fly; Christopher Sponaugle, US History teacher, is trying to figure out how to give tests without Canvas.
“All of my assignments are on Google Docs so if they have the assignment already in their drive, they can continue to work on it, but I can’t do any assessments until Canvas is back up,” said Sponaugle. “The only way I could do it is if I print out the tests and do it on paper, but then I have to hand grade.”
This isn’t the first time the group has hacked Instructure, the developer and owner of Canvas. The ShinyHunters took over Canvas in May, 2019. Security precautions were put in place but clearly were not sufficient.
With this being the second time Canvas has been hacked, teachers are growing frustrated. One of the reasons Canvas is used is because it’s supposed to be more secure for student data privacy protection. The previous, and widely preferred system, Google Classroom, could not guarantee it, so Wake County switched to Canvas.
In ironic fashion, this hack is taking place during National Teacher Appreciation Week. At a time when teachers should be celebrated and honored, they are fumbling to come up with ways to give assignments and keep their classroom running.
Overall, although this is certainly a dangerous threat, it is not nearly as treacherous as the Powerschool data breaches in late December 2024. This hack threatened the release of students’ data, including their social security numbers. Either way, the release of private data could have major repercussions.
