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Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

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Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#153
post #101
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness in the era where universities did it themselves the tech requirements and expectations were dramatically lower.

Tech requirements are the same as they always were. One needs to ask whether they need so many frameworks to host some files on the internet and submit some files and perform spreadsheet calculations. We still used one of those First Age 1990s websites for sort of pre lab quizzes this one class when I was going through it, and it might have looked a little "old" but I mean it did the thing and worked for years and wi…

You're being deliberately obtuse. Canvas has many many features. Wikis and discussion boards and quizzes (with some anticheat) and groups and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, while it was never the flashiest thing, it did it better than many of its predecessors. Yes, an individual class may not use all of these features, and yes canvas has suffered feature creep even over my time as a student and yes canvas is not doing anything technically challenging, but there is enough of it that each school rolling their own everything would be a drastic waste of everybody's time and money.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#154
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "minimum sentence so painful" will certainly dissuade foreign nationals, even foreign governments.

interestingly, having actually done the law enforcement side of these investigations, 50% of them are local. And I understand that this is not 100% solution, but neither is any form of law enforcement, but that doesn't mean we should fail to attempt it. Kids from the local uni having a lark, stalkers, vindictive ex employees, local gangs, criminals who understand their victims because they hail from the same communit…

50% of ransomware attacks are local to where? You’ll need to cite some sources because I don’t believe that is possible.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#155

My kids are in the middle of their finals week. What a mess. Universities know nothing, Canvas claims to be in a "scheduled maintenance", and one Prof claims to "not have any copies of material offline" which seems pretty negligent. Sounds like one section of a popular class will be doing paper exams while other sections had Canvas-based "half points for 2nd attempt"-type exams earlier today. How soon before names &…

The "Scheduled Maintenance" is just total B.S. and just honestly makes them look worse. Apparently according to their status pages this is what 99.996% uptime looks like. Pay attention lol.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#156
post #155

My kids are in the middle of their finals week. What a mess. Universities know nothing, Canvas claims to be in a "scheduled maintenance", and one Prof claims to "not have any copies of material offline" which seems pretty negligent. Sounds like one section of a popular class will be doing paper exams while other sections had Canvas-based "half points for 2nd attempt"-type exams earlier today. How soon before names &…

The "Scheduled Maintenance" is just total B.S. and just honestly makes them look worse. Apparently according to their status pages this is what 99.996% uptime looks like. Pay attention lol.

It has been over 5 hours now and there has not been any communication about this being an attack, despite many of us seeing the ShinyHunters message on the login page.

There is a lot of people who likely are unaware the latest outage is because they were compromised again.

Them marking the incident as 'Under Maintenance' means the status page isn't reporting this as an outage and adding to downtime%.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#158
post #91

I remember circa 2010 a friend of mine at college was like “blackboard sucks, let’s build something new”. At the time I poo pood the idea and lo and behold canvas came out a year later. Outside looking in, they been crushing it.

As someone who has used both as a student and a TA I find blackboard miles better, much easier to find what i'm looking for and my professors seem to have better luck laying out their course on blackboard than canvas.

I actually disagree, based on my time using Blackboard as an admin, student, and teacher. Although my experience is a few years out of date, I found the interface cumbersome and the performance slow.

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#159

I wonder when the public is going to start calling for corporate liability for malpractice in software development and corporate liability for malpractice in IT deployments. Even if the tech industry fights it, it probably won't be that much longer.

I'll never understand this point of view. If someone would please explain how to create perfectly secure software, I will gladly start writing perfectly secure software. Only after, if it's clear I ignored obviously correct advice, should there be malpractice penalties. Consider surgery instead of software development. There are general best practices, but the difference between a good surgeon and a poor one is a sma…

> "Consider surgery instead of software development."

Is that really the analogy you want to use the bolster your argument? Licensing was forced on the medical profession because of rampant quackery causing a large number of deaths. Some of the horrors that went on before enforced medical licensing are well-nigh unbelievable, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley

Re: Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data

#160
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "minimum sentence so painful" will certainly dissuade foreign nationals, even foreign governments.

interestingly, having actually done the law enforcement side of these investigations, 50% of them are local. And I understand that this is not 100% solution, but neither is any form of law enforcement, but that doesn't mean we should fail to attempt it. Kids from the local uni having a lark, stalkers, vindictive ex employees, local gangs, criminals who understand their victims because they hail from the same communit…

One tech ransom case I know of was an inside job. It definitely happens.

There are already significant penalties for doing anything like this. The guy involved is in prison for a very long time. I don’t recall the exact number of years but I do remember it was so long that he wasn’t going to see his kids grow up.

I don’t think anyone who puts a little thought into a crime like this doesn’t understand that the penalties are already very huge. You don’t get a slap on the wrist for extorting a company (or person, for that matter)

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