ShinyHunters hacked Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, on Thursday afternoon — just over a week before grades are due on May 18. UT San Antonio Academic Affairs alerted students Thursday evening that all assignments and exams due through Friday, May 8, will be rescheduled. UTSA Today posted an update on Friday at 8:15 a.m., revealing access to Canvas is restored; however, not all functions are available.
“As part of our ongoing response to the recent Canvas global disruption, some Canvas-related tools, features and integrations are currently being reconfigured,” the article read. “At this time, full functionality has not yet been restored.”
Upon opening Canvas, a message by the hackers reads, “ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again). Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some ‘security patches’.”
Reddit user RainbowDyanmix under r/UTSA alleged “Instructure was breached by ShinyHunters WEEKS ago. They demanded a ransom payment and Instructure ignored them. You can thank Instructure for not taking their security seriously.”
The Academic Affairs office sent out an email addressing the Canvas technical difficulties.
“Tech Solutions (UTS) and Academic Innovation support teams are actively working with Canvas vendor support toward resolution as quickly as possible, although it is possible the issue may take a longer period of time to fully resolve,” the statement read. “We understand this is an especially challenging time of the semester with finals and end-of-term assignments underway. We are examining what alternative options will be made available to support completion of the semester and will continue to stay in communication as we learn more.”
Moreover, the ShinyHunters statement contained a warning.
“If any of the schools in the affected list 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 statement read.
The warning gave a deadline of until the end of the day on May 12 for Instructure to negotiate a settlement. Otherwise, the breached information will be leaked.
Approximately, 9,000 universities across the U.S. have been affected by the cybersecurity attack.
Professor of interdisciplinary learning and teaching Crystal Kalinec-Craig expressed a sense of shock at the hack in a statement written to The Paisano.
“This is quite unexpected and this is why I back up all of my materials to another drive,” Kalinec-Craig explained. “I hope everyone gives each other grace, especially students working on their finals for graduation, during this stressful time.”
Kalinec-Craig has provided an extension to her students work due Canvas’ inaccessibility on Thursday.
Professor of political science and geography Rita Mathur spoke to The Paisano about the cyber attack from her own perspective, not representing the university.
Mathur encountered the technical issue around 4 p.m. She explained she logged in and saw a site maintenance message. After reading the message, she logged out of Canvas.
Mathur’s current research focuses primarily on militarization and weaponization of cyberspace. She also teaches a class about cyber politics, in which she discusses cyber nationalism, private partnerships in cyber space and cyber hacking groups on an international scale.
“It helps when you understand the problems better. You understand the history, you understand the politics, you understand how negotiations take place, how the forensics examination works, etc.,” Mathur detailed.
According to Marthur, UT San Antonio has not dealt with a cyber attack this impactful for the past 12 years she has taught at the university.
“As far as as my knowledge goes, from working at UTSA for more than a decade, we haven’t been subject to this kind of attack previously, and I think the university does a good job of securing the system, etc., so I think we should just be patient and have confidence in the administration to sort out this problem,” Mathur assessed.
Further details provided by UTSA Today suggest clearing your browser cache and cookies prior to using Canvas LMS. This is a developing story The Paisano will continue to report on.
