After Brief Outage Due to Hackers, Canvas, Learning Zone Are Operational Again

By Lizzie Rush
Editor In Chief
IG: liz.rush

In the wake of finals week, a group of hackers that refer to themselves as “ShinyHunters” hacked into the widely-used  learning system, Canvas on Thursday. Hutchinson Community College was one school that saw Canvas become inaccessible.

It was reported that thousands of schools across the country were affected by this hack.

The hackers left a note for Instructure, the parent company of Canvas.

“If any of the schools in the affected lists are interested in preventing the release of their data, please consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact us privately at TOX to negotiate a settlement,” the note said.

Denny Stoecklein, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, sent out a message to HutchCC students in regards of this breach.

“We know this is happening at the worst possible time — finals week — and we are doing everything we can to support you through this disruption. Your professors have been notified and will communicate with you directly about any changes to deadlines or exams,” Stoecklein said.

USA Today reported that the group of hackers is claiming to have affected nearly 9,000 schools worldwide and have the data of 275 million Canvas users, although this has not been confirmed to be true.

As of this morning, Canvas at HutchCC was back up and running.

In a new email from the HutchCC marketing team,

“Canvas is back up and running at this time. As a precaution, please be aware that some email addresses may have been compromised during the outage. We encourage everyone to exercise caution and remain alert for potential phishing attempts or suspicious emails,” Stoecklein said.

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