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Schools affected by Canvas data breach
A cyber attack caused chaos for students at thousands of colleges and schools across the country on Thursday. That includes some in North Texas.
PLANO, Texas - A cyberattack on an online learning platform disrupted schools and universities nationwide, including many in North Texas.
Canvas Outage
What we know:
The Canvas outage and data breach on Thursday impacted more than 30 million active users across the nation, just as many were preparing to take final exams.
Canvas is one of the most widely used learning education platforms. Students and teachers use it to access assignments, grades, lecture videos, and course materials.
The hacking group known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility and threatened to release sensitive student data.
Canvas reportedly hacked by ShinyHunters, claiming data breach
Canvas, a widely used learning management system by Instructure, experienced outages Thursday afternoon.
What they're saying:
A cybersecurity analyst said hackers are increasingly targeting schools and universities.
"We are looking to a possible big data leak of minor data, student data, which can be potentially concerning," said Juan Guevara Torres, a tech expert.
Local perspective:
Several school districts in North Texas have said they were impacted, including Plano and Allen ISDs.
Colleges across the metroplex also report problems, such as Southern Methodist University and Tarrant County Community College.
What we don't know:
Officials with Canvas’s parent company, Infrastructure, have not released details about the extent of the breach or when service will be fully restored.
The Source: The information in this story comes from the Associated Press, emails from school districts and universities.