Stanford, Cal and San Jose State are just three of Bay Area schools impacted by a nationwide hack of the popular learning platform Canvas.
The hacking group “ShinyHunters” is claiming responsibility for the breach at Instructure, the company behind the popular learning platform.
San Jose State is also warning students and faculty that cyber criminals might have access to personal information like names, email addresses, student id numbers and user messages.
“I have a project due tomorrow, so that’s already inconvenient, all of my finals start next week and they’re all almost online, so I can’t even study,” said Kennedy, a San Jose State student.
For students, Canvas is where they turn in assignments, check grades and get study materials, so the outage is causing a lot of stress ahead of finals.
“I knew we had an exam review today for class, I was trying to look at the study guide and I couldn’t, it wouldn’t let me go into canvas, so I couldn’t study for anything,” Noah said, another San Jose State student.
San Jose State Engineering Professor and tech expert Ahmed Banafa says he’s already given his students extensions on assignments. He also warns this could lead to more phishing scams targeting students and staff.
“They can send an email as if it’s coming from the IT department or from the professor of from the school and ask for information or click on this link and now, ando they can access your information or computer,” Banafa said.
UC Berkeley warned its students to watch out for suspicious messages. There is still no word on when the system will be fully back up and running.