News

Canvas Developer Reports Data Breach

Schools throughout North Carolina and across the country use the platform, created by Instructure. A hacker group may have acquired student names, email addresses, and ID numbers.

Cybercriminals in the ShinyHunters gang allegedly hacked Instructure, the education tech company that developed Canvas.

If you're a parent with kids in Durham Public Schools - or just about any North Carolina school - you may be familiar with the platform, which is used to track assignments and grades, and to facilitate communications between teachers and students.

ShinyHunters, a group that has targeted universities and cloud database companies, seeks to steal personal information and then threatens to post data online if ransom's not paid.

On May 1, Steve Proud, the chief information security officer for Instructure, posted that the company was investigating "a cybersecurity incident perpetrated by a criminal threat actor."

On May 2, Proud reported "indications are that the information involved consists of certain identifying information of users at affected institutions, such as names, email addresses, and student ID numbers, as well as messages among users. At this time, we have found no evidence that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved."

On May 6, company officials shared that Canvas was "fully operational and we are not seeing any ongoing unauthorized activity."

According to TechCrunch, about 8,800 schools nationwide are affected by the breach.

Durham Public Schools officials have yet to announce whether our schools are confirmed within the data breach, but it has been confirmed in Wake County.