Cyberattack Cripples Learning Platform Used by Thousands of US

Thousands of American schools and universities were left without access to a critical learning management system on Thursday after a cyberattack struck just as students were gearing up for final exams. The outage affected the "Canvas" platform, a widely used tool for managing grades, assignments, lecture videos, and curriculum notes.

Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm "Emsisoft," stated that a hacking group calling itself "Shiny Hunters" has claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure, the company that develops Canvas. Instructure did not immediately respond to requests for comment or clarify whether the system was taken offline as a precautionary measure or if the attackers caused the shutdown.

According to Connolly, the hacking group posted online that roughly 9,000 schools worldwide had been impacted, with access gained to billions of private messages and other records. Instructure has not posted any information about the attack on its social media accounts.

Universities and school districts quickly began notifying students and parents about the disruption.