Universities across the country, including UMass Lowell, UMass Boston, MIT and Harvard University, were hit by a computer hack to the Canvas Learning Management System, an email and course assignment app, throwing campuses into chaos on Thursday just as final exams were taking place.
Order was restored and the program was back to working on Friday, but some universities, including UMass Lowell and UMass Boston, canceled exams on Thursday. UMass Lowell rescheduled exams to Monday, which was already scheduled as a make-up day for exams that were missed.
The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.
The group began threatening Sunday to leak the trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.
Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to a other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary.
“Cybersecurity is a major problem in this country, and all over the world,” said UMass President Marty Meehan, “but our [Information Technology] department is all over it and we believe that other than delaying finals, we are in good shape. … We have a cybersecurity task force, an [artificial intelligence] task force, it represents an ongoing challenge.”
Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments and lecture videos. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages, student information and other records accessed, Connolly said. Other schools affected reportedly included Duke University, Georgetown University and Princeton University, among others.
Students quickly took to social media to ask if others were unable to access Canvas, with many panicking that they could no longer view course materials housed within the platform to study for their final exams.
Teachers say they were having to find workarounds to help students study for exams and submit final assignments.
Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a post on the social media platform X that his students had been relying on Canvas to access every reading from the semester and all of his lecture slides before their Monday final exams. The outage leaves students and faculty “dead in the water here in academia right now,” he said.
The student newspaper at Harvard reported that the system there was down as well.
UMass Lowell Canvas users were asked to remain vigilant of any email or interaction that may look suspicious, and were told they should IT with concerns. All UMass Lowell commencement activities, set for May 15-16, are on schedule and have not been affected.
Lowell Sun Senior Editor John Vincent contributed to this report.
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