Washington, North Idaho colleges largely back in business following Thursday cyberattack
May 8-Following a nationwide cyberattack downing popular coursework and grading platform Canvas, universities in Washington and North Idaho were largely operational once again Friday.
The cyberattack was apparently perpetrated by a hacking group called ShinyHunters, as evidenced by a popup students saw while attempting to log into their accounts around midday Thursday. The popup threatened to release private student information if schools did not "negotiate a settlement."
University of Idaho, Eastern Washington University, Washington State University, Gonzaga University, Spokane's community colleges, Whitworth University and University of Washington were all affected, with students and faculty losing access to their assignments, grades and other learning materials.
Semester-based schools are either preparing for or administering final exams in early May.
The Canvas outage came two days before WSU's Saturday commencement ceremony.
Canvas' parent company, Instructure, posted that the platform had been largely restored by late Thursday night.
The colleges were mostly back to business as usual Friday. Spokespersons for the institutions either did not respond to questions concerning, or were unaware of, any ransoms being paid by their institutions towards the hacking group.
Spokane Falls and Community colleges' directing organization, the Community and Technical Colleges state board, released a statement warning that student names, email addresses, ID numbers and Canvas messages may have been accessed in the breach.
A post by Instructure said that student passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers and financial information do not appear to have been shared.
University of Idaho spokeswoman Jodi Walker said the school is optimistic about the security of Canvas moving forward, though administration is encouraging students to download and protect current and future course materials just to be on the safe side.
University of Washington disabled use of Canvas out of "an abundance of caution" while Instructure completes security verification, per updates on the UW website. There was no estimated date for reinstation as of Friday.
Instructure posted that it is continuing to monitor the situation closely and has notified federal law enforcement. Multiple universities and Instructure have advised campus communities to avoid clicking suspicious links sent to their emails.
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