Canvas hack strands university students during finals week

NEW YORK (CNN) — Students attempting to access grades, study materials and quizzes were met instead with a message from a hacking group on Thursday.

Universities and school systems across the country, from local school districts to Georgetown University, reported a ransom note on the homepage of their schools’ Canvas sites. Canvas is a popular, cloud-based digital hub for classrooms.

Canvas has more than 30 million active users globally, parent company Instructure says on its website, with more than 8,000 institutions as customers. Many of those students are in the middle of a busy Spring finals week.

Several universities across the country, including Columbia University, Rutgers, Princeton, Kent State, Harvard and Georgetown have issued statements alerting students to the hack impacting institutions nationwide. School districts in California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have also been affected.

• News 8 has confirmed Indiana University’s campuses are affected.

This is the second data breach this month among schools and universities. Hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for both attacks. In the note, reported by different student news outlets, the group demanded ransoms to prevent further data le...