Teachers and students at Long Beach Unified, Cal State Long Beach and Long Beach City College were locked out of the computer system used for grades, assignments and messages on Thursday afternoon after an apparent cybersecurity breach targeting school districts and higher education across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long Beach Unified said it learned on Tuesday that Instructure, the third-party provider of the district\u2019s grading platform, Canvas, had been hacked by an \u201cunauthorized individual\u201d who gained access to \u201ccertain identifying user information,\u201d according to an email sent to families and staff, reviewed by the Long Beach Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The email said that Instructure confirmed the incident had been contained and that Canvas remained fully operational. But by Thursday after lunch, teachers told the Post they had lost access to the platform and that when they tried to log in, they were instead met with a pop-up allegedly from ShinyHunters, a cybercrime group linked to a series of high-profile data breaches this week from K-12 schools<\/a> to major university systems nationwide<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The message, reviewed by the Post, appeared to be holding the district\u2019s data for ransom. It demanded that schools consult with a cyber advisory firm and negotiate a settlement with ShinyHunters before May 12. Otherwise, the message said, their data would be leaked.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was unclear what information had been compromised, though an email to students and staff at CSULB indicated that names, email addresses, campus ID numbers and user messages may have been affected. LBUSD wrote to staff and families that \u201cthe extent of the vendor\u2019s data incident is not yet known, as the investigation continues.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Instructure had already taken action to shut down Canvas, address the vulnerability that led to the breach, engage with forensic experts, notify law enforcement (including the FBI and CISA) and enhance monitoring and security, according to information on the Cal State University website<\/a>. This comes a week before final exams are set to be administered at CSULB<\/a>.<\/p>\n LBUSD teachers told the Post that this incident was hugely disruptive. Tom McNamee, a teacher and tech coordinator at Lakewood High School, said that most of what teachers need to access is built and stored in Canvas. He got around that by housing most of his materials in the Google suite, allowing students to continue working on their projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n One employee at Poly High School said that student progress reports were due imminently but she couldn\u2019t access the platform to input grades. The Canvas homepage on Thursday afternoon read, \u201cCanvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Check back soon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n