Canvas, an educational platform used by school districts and universities across Illinois, is down after reporting a nationwide data breach Thursday.
The outage has unfortunately coincided with final exam season for thousands of students in the state, leading many to fret about the platform’s eventual return.
Here’s what we know about why Canvas is down and when it may be back up.
What is Canvas?
Canvas is a learning management system (LMS) owned by Instructure. Academic institutions, including K-12 schools and universities, use it in a number of ways.
For example, students can submit assignments, take quizzes/exams and message their teachers and classmates while instructors often use it to input grades, upload instructional materials and share announcements with their classes.
In-person, online and hybrid classes use Canvas to distribute and manage coursework.
The platform has more than 30 million users worldwide, according to Instructure.
Was Canvas hacked? What Instructure says happened
Instructure experienced two different breaches of Canvas, the first on April 29 and the second May 7.
“Out of caution, we temporarily took Canvas offline into maintenance mode to contain the activity, investigate and apply additional safeguards,” Instructure said on their website.
The company claims in their security update that they discovered how the group was able to hack the system on both occasions and has temporarily shut down their Free-For-Teachers accounts.
A hacker group called ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.
CNN reported the group demanded settlements from Instructure and/or individually impacted academic institutions to prevent data from being leaked.
What schools are affected by the Canvas hacking?
Several Illinois universities reported issues with Canvas in recent days, including Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Northwestern posted an update Thursday, May 7, saying the university’s IT department was investigating the issue, confirming the platform was still unavailable, as of 9:13 a.m. CT on Friday, May 8.
UIUC posted an update at 9:16 a.m. Friday saying Canvas users should not attempt to access the platform, despite some saying it’s back online.
“Last night campus leadership made the decision to delay reactivation to evaluate risk before restoring access to our Canvas environment,” the university said.
Meanwhile, UIC confirmed May 7 that the platform was unavailable and being worked on by the university’s infrastructure team.
When will Canvas be fixed?
At the time of publication, some users are still reporting problems with Canvas, according to DownDetector.
The status of Canvas according to Instructure is unclear. The website states as of 10:17 p.m. CT on May 7, “Canvas is now available for most users,” but Canvas LMS, the platform as a whole, is currently listed as “under maintenance.”
On the incident update page, Instructure states “Canvas is fully back online and available for use,” but users are still reporting issues logging in and accessing their coursework.
It is unknown as of late Friday morning when Canvas will be back online and fully operational for all users.
For more information, those affected can check Canvas’ status at status.instructure.com and visit instructure.com/incident_update for answers to FAQs about the data breach.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Is Canvas still down? Illinois schools report issues following breach
Reporting by Hannah Hudnall and Katie Wiseman, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
