Canvas restored at Penn State after outage led to canceled tests during finals week
Penn State students and faculty have regained access to the academic website Canvas after a temporary global outage linked to a hacking group.
The website went down late Thursday afternoon, causing Penn State to cancel all tests in the Pollock Testing Center on Thursday and Friday. In an early Friday afternoon update, Penn State wrote that access was expected to be restored by 1:30 p.m. The university noted that some integrations and services may have limited functionality during the initial restoration period.
“Penn State teams will continue to monitor the environment closely and provide updates as restoration efforts progress,” an email to students read.
The university was among thousands of schools affected by the outage, leaving students unable to access grades and other class materials during finals week for many. The hacking group ShinyHunters, a group known for large-scale data breaches and extortion campaigns targeting major companies, reportedly claimed responsibility for the data breach at Instructure, the parent company and creator of Canvas.
Canvas users encountered a message Thursday that stated the group breached Instructure and accused the company of ignoring their outreach demands and instead implementing “security patches.” It urged affected schools to consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact the group privately to negotiate a settlement before the end of the day on May 12 — or risk their data being leaked.
By Friday afternoon, Instructure’s website posted an update that Canvas is now available for most users. The website previously noted that Instructure placed Canvas in “maintenance mode.”
In the note to students, Penn State said it was communicating with instructors about their options to determine and submit final grades, if they hadn’t done so already. The university did not directly address the hacking group’s threat to leak data.
“You should expect different approaches from different instructors depending on the unique circumstances of the courses,” the university wrote.
Delays in final grades will not affect the weekend’s commencement ceremonies, according to the university.
