Canvas at Iowa State was breached around 2:40 p.m. Thursday with a hacker message.
The message blocked access to the website and all pages with a message that advised to “consult with a cyber advisory firm” and “contact us privately at TOX to negotiate a settlement.”
Thursday’s hack is one of over 9,000 other attacks that have affected other schools. The hackers first breached Canvas with an outage a few days ago, and have also stolen data from Ticketmaster and Google.
Hackers have accessed names, email addresses, ID numbers and internal messages.
As of 3:40 p.m., the message has been replaced with, “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Check back soon.”
Iowa State IT Security sent an email addressing the outage, and encouraging students to check with instructors for alternate submission methods as needed for coursework.
Angie Hunt, Iowa State news service director, also addressed the outage in a statement to the Iowa State Daily.
“Iowa State is one of many institutions impacted by a nationwide outage affecting the Canvas platform,” Hunt stated. “Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, has not provided a timeframe for when the issue will be resolved. Until access is restored, the university is encouraging instructors to adjust timelines and provide other methods for submitting assignments.”
Instructure, the Canvas parent company, does not have a resolution timeframe, however, regular updates will be posted to the university’s IT StatusHub page.
