Seton Hall students are experiencing a campus-wide Canvas outage on Thursday.
When students attempt to access their courses, they are met with a page that reads “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Check back soon.” The outage is part of a larger security breach, Chief Information Officer Paul Fisher confirmed in an email to the SHU community on Thursday.
Cybercriminal group ShinyHunters claimed on Sunday that they had stolen personal data through Canvas, including private messages from 275 million individuals, with 9,000 schools reportedly affected worldwide. The group also threatened to leak the sensitive information and “several annoying (digital) problems” if the company did not pay the ransom by May 6.
“Make the right decision, don’t be the next headline,” ShinyHunters wrote in the ransom letter published on Sunday.
According to Bugcrowd, ShinyHunters is a threat group that gained prominence in 2020 after stealing over 200 million records from 13 companies. Earlier this month, the group claimed responsibility for stealing over 90 million customer data records from Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce website.
According to a list of affected institutions published by ShinyHunters, SHU’s data has been breached.
Instructure, Canvas’s parent company, posted an update at 2:41 p.m. saying they are “currently investigating this issue.” As of 6:44 p.m., the website remains inaccessible.
According to Instructure, the company’s platforms are used by over 13 million people in post-secondary education.
SHU uses Canvas as the university’s learning management system. Fisher assured the SHU community that Information Technology (IT) is working closely with Instructure.
“Information Technology is in contact with Instructure and is monitoring the situation closely,” Fisher wrote. “We are also working with the Office of the Provost and the Deans on guidance regarding exams, assignments, and deadlines affected by the outage, as necessary.”
The outage came just before Jasmyn Taylor, a junior communications major, was set to take an exam.
“I was preparing to study [for my exam], but now I can’t study anything…it sucks,” Taylor said.
Rosaly Rivera, a junior journalism major, was in the same position and said the outage raises concerns for her ability to study for her final exams.
“I'm kind of stressed a bit because there were some documents on [Canvas] that I kind of needed to access that now I can't see to study,” Rivera said.
It causes further worry for Taylor, who is concerned about how long the outage will last.
“Will this still be pushed back to tomorrow?” Taylor said. “I need to study.”
Fisher addressed this concern in his email to the SHU community.
“We know the timing of this is hard,” Fisher wrote in the email. “Finals are underway, coursework is due, and Canvas being offline right now is genuinely disruptive.”
Fisher encouraged students to “stay alert for phishing messages referencing Canvas, your courses, or account recovery.” Anything suspicious should be reported to the Service Desk.
This is a developing story. Check back at TheSetonian.com or @TheSetonian on Instagram for updates.
Megan Pitt is the head editor of The Setonian’s News section. She can be reached at megan.pitt@student.shu.edu.
Lakyn Austin is the head editor of The Setonian’s Features section. She can be reached at lakyn.austin@student.shu.edu.
