Canvas down, reportedly due to cyberattack

Cavas, the widely used service for school and university assignments, is experiencing a nationwide outage due to a possible cyberattack.

What we know:

Thousands of users have reported noticeable disruptions with the learning management system since around 12:30 p.m. PT, according to DownDetector.

The University of Washington IT confirmed the disruption is due to an "apparent security incident" that has made the platform fully inaccessible to all users.

Many people online are posting a picture of a message that appears when users try to log into Canvas, a warning from the hacking group ShinyHunters threatening a data leak.

"ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again). Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some 'security patches,'" it read. The message said all data will be leaked by May 12 if a settlement is not reached.

Canvas cyberattack message (via Reddit user @lakerdave)

Canvas, owned by Instructure, provides online courses, assignments, grading, and education tools used by schools and colleges across the country. The outage is leaving thousands of students and educators unable to access its services during a critical period of the school year, as many are finishing finals and midterms.

What we don't know:

Instructure is still investigating the issue and has not confirmed if the outage is a result of a cyberattack. The public can check the current status of Canvas and other services on Instructure's website.

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