A cyberattack causing a Canvas outage during finals week left Sacramento State students unable to access exams, grades and assignments.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Students at California State University, Sacramento, and colleges across the country are scrambling days before finals after a nationwide cyberattack shut down Canvas, the online learning platform many schools rely on for classes, assignments, and grades.

For many students, the outage came at the worst possible time.

“It is unbelievable,” Sacramento State junior Biola Jinadu said.

Theo Carter, a Sacramento State sophomore, said he missed an exam deadline because Canvas was unavailable.

“I had an exam I had to get done by 5 p.m. and I missed it because the Canvas was shut down,” Carter said.

Infrastructure, the company behind Canvas, said names, email addresses, student ID numbers and private messages may have been accessed before the breach was contained.

William Robey, a Sacramento State senior graduating in two weeks, said the outage only added more stress during finals season.

“I graduate in two weeks. And the last thing I want to do is just keep adding more stuff to my plate,” Robey said.

Robey said he first learned about the outage while asking a professor about final exam information.

“She said, well I actually don’t know off the top of my head and I can’t check because Canvas is down,” Robey said. “I was like, is Canvas really down, and I checked my phone. It is really down.”

Mun Kang, Professor and Chair of the Radio, TV and Film Department at Cosumnes River College, said schools across the country depend on Canvas for nearly everything tied to coursework.

“We post grades on there. We put assignments on there. People submit assignments and projects,” Kang said.

With the system offline, Kang said faculty may need to find other ways for students to turn in work temporarily.

“I might have to draft an email like, ‘hey, upload your stuff to Google Drive and send me the email,’” Kang said.

Sacramento State senior Miliani Ruiz said the outage highlighted how dependent schools have become on technology.

“The timing could not have been worse,” Ruiz said.

“It’s kind of scary just to know how much we depend on it, too,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz said she has not submitted paper assignments in years.

“I don’t know,” Ruiz said with a laugh when asked whether students may need to go back to more traditional methods. “If that is how I am going to graduate, then that is how I am going to do it.”

The company that operates Canvas said it is continuing to investigate the breach as students and faculty wait for the system to come back online.

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