Security Week reports that Instructure is the latest edtech firm to fall prey to hackers.
Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the edtech firm is best known for Canvas, one of the most widely used learning platforms across educational institutions and other organizations.
Disclosed on April 30, the cyberattack was blamed for “disruption to tools relying on API keys” and was largely addressed by Sunday, May 3, when access to the Canvas Data 2 platform was restored.
On May 1, Instructure announced that the incident was perpetrated by cybercriminals and that it had retained outside forensics experts to investigate.
Read more at Security Week.
Instructure has provided updates on its website. Its most recent update indicates that Canvas Data 2 should now be available for all customers, while Canvas Beta & Test remain under maintenance.
The updates also disclose that the attackers gained access to personal information “such as names, email addresses, and student ID numbers. User messages were also compromised.”
Although they do not name the attackers, ShinyHunters claims responsibility for the attack and has shared proof of claims with journalists at Bleeping Computer and DataBreaches.net.
A listing on ShinyHunters’ leak site claims, “Nearly 9,000 schools worldwide affected. 275 million individuals data ranging from students, teachers, and other staff containing PII. Several billions of private messages among students and teachers and students and other students involved, containing personal conversations and other PII. Your Salesforce instance was also breached and a lot more other data is involved. ” Instructure has not responded to specific claims about the number of schools, individuals, or messages.
