Different Universities around the world, including American ones Harvard y Stanfordthey went on alert, after a hack to the Canvas educational platform. The massive cyber attack that occurred in the last few hours endangers the exams of almost 9,000 universities and compromises data of more than 200 million users around the planet.
The attack was carried out by ShinyHuntersa well-known active cyberextortion group that has been causing blockages and data theft of very important sites around the planet for just under 10 years.
Now, the victim was Canvas where they blocked access to the learning platform.
According to various American media reports, students who tried to access the system this Thursday saw a message from the hacking group that said that the servers belonging to Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, had been violated «again.»
In a message spread on the networks, the hackers who claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, They blamed the authorities of the educational platform: «Instead of contacting us to resolve it, they ignored us and made some ‘security patches,'» they wrote.
And they added: «If any of the centers included in the affected list are interested in preventing the publication of their data, consult with a cybersecurity advisory firm and contact us privately… to negotiate an agreement»they extorted.
The first reports show that they not only blocked the system that prevents access to the platform. But also, They stole millions of data from students, teachers and staff linked to universities and now they use it as an extortion weapon: «We will publish all the stolen data if the institutions do not get in touch before May 12,» they threatened.
The message that went viral on the networks included a link to a list of schools that ShinyHunters claims to have breached through Canvas. In the United States, there are already 160 confirmed.
In turn, the American Stanford University stated that Canvas was currently unavailable «due to an issue the provider is experiencing.»
And he added that Instructure, the company that created Canvas, had recently disclosed a nationwide information security issue that they said «had been contained.»
The truth is that Canvas suffered a new interruption with the addition that hackers claim to have stolen sensitive data from university students.
From Instructure they pointed out that the data stolen in the initial leak included personal information such as names, email addresses and student identification numbers, as well as private messages exchanged between users.
With information from AFP
