Indiana University’s Canvas page remained down Friday morning, the last day of final exams week.
It appeared to be hacked starting from around 4 p.m. Thursday, according to a notice from Status.IU. The notice said Canvas access “has been suspended while the vendor and law enforcement work to resolve the issue.”
In an email Friday, University Information Technology Services told students to stay in touch with instructors, who are being encouraged to communicate any planned updates to exams or assignments with students.
“While we are aware that a small number of institutions have seen Canvas functionality restored, our priority remains to restore service as soon as possible, while also protecting IU’s data security,” the email read.
Cybercrime group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack in a pop-up message prompted when users clicked on a link within the Canvas page.
“ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again),” the message read. “Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some ‘security patches.'"
Now, the IU Canvas page is listed as “undergoing maintenance.”
The group allegedly first hacked Canvas on May 1. Other schools, like Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania, were also impacted by recent ShinyHunters hacks. IU appeared to not have outwardly been affected by the May 1 attacks.
The hacking group claimed online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, a cybersecurity firm threat analyst told The Associated Press.
WIRED reported the group tends to extort companies after hacking their website and leak the stolen information to the dark web if the requested ransom isn’t paid. The message told IU to consult with a cyber advisory firm to then negotiate a settlement with ShinyHunters via an encrypted instant messaging protocol.
IU University Information Technology Services referred the Indiana Daily Student to IU’s communications office.
In an email, Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Rick Van Kooten told IU Canvas users not to log in using their credentials.
"Canvas is experiencing a global outage that affects Indiana University and other educational institutions," IU spokesperson Mark Bode wrote in a text to the IDS on Thursday. "More updates and instructions will be shared as they are available."
UPDATE MAY 7: This story has been updated to include a comment from an IU spokesperson.
UPDATE MAY 8: This story was updated to reflect the outage was ongoing Friday and to include added information on the status of the hack.
