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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

#411

1. It should be illegal for any company to pay ransomware attacks. Period. No pay out ever. 2. The penalty for being the attacker should be linked to the system they violated. If you do this to a hospital and someone dies you are life in prison / chair. The minimum sentence should be so painful that it deters the attack. No this will not stop this and companies need to be held accountable for their lack of security i…

The only way to prevent terrorism is to never meet terrorists' demands.

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

#412
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let classes that normally count for a grade just submit grades as pass-fail. Because what else can you do? Schedule a single exam and that's your grade for that subject? That's how it should work anyway, credits for work during semester (or worse attendance) are not needed to evaluate if someone learned the material, give them an exam and done.

That's just bad outdated practice. It leads to cramming and less remembering than of the demand is for students to do work and show learning and effort throughout the year.

Most courses I've taken have obligatory assignments that are pass/fail, and you have to pass a certain amount during the semester to take the final exam. But the grade is determined entirely of the final exam.

Which to me seems the best way, you still have to learn throughout the year. Especially to avoid cheating this works nice. And as an aside, most people I know that did a year abroad in the US got 1-2 grades higher, as it was quite easy to just farm extra credits.

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

#413

Perspective from the trenches: I teach at a university that uses Canvas. We are in our final exams period right now. We got our first email (from Academic Affairs) notifying us that it was down at 5:17pm EDT this afternoon, with little info; followup emails were sent at 6:24 and 6:57 with more info, but mostly about how we would be compensating for it and not about what actually was going on (other than, "nationwide…

I don't understand what's the panic and doomerism about. Any competent IT team has backups and will be up and running as they go back to a state before the breach. This is HN. I'm disappointed that everyone is talking about losing grades and going back to pen and paper. I don't see how that could happen in 2026. And from the hacker's message itself, it's clear they want money in exchange for not releasing private inf…

I'm sure you're right. Across tens (hundreds?) of thousands of institutions worldwide, each one is exercising its well-written incident runbook that not only gets updated regularly but also is rehearsed constantly, just in case something like this happens. After all, what university IT department DOESN'T prepare obsessively for the moment when they need to restore all grades on all assignments for all courses from backup and fall over to the backup system for final exam administration in any required format specified by any professor, in the second week of May, on a non-negotiable schedule? There's absolutely nothing to worry about here.

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

#414

1. It should be illegal for any company to pay ransomware attacks. Period. No pay out ever. 2. The penalty for being the attacker should be linked to the system they violated. If you do this to a hospital and someone dies you are life in prison / chair. The minimum sentence should be so painful that it deters the attack. No this will not stop this and companies need to be held accountable for their lack of security i…

> It should be illegal for any company to pay ransomware attacks. Period.

That makes as much sense as illegal to give your wallet to a mugger.

I.e. no sense.

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

#415
post #15

> Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance doesn't seem that scheduled to me

ex-Instructure employee here (though it's been about 10 years since I worked for them). That's just the quickest page/status update to throw up; it was a one-liner to push it live back when I was on the deploy rotation. I'd hazard a guess they have more important things to worry about right now than exact status page messaging ;)

> That's just the quickest page/status update to throw up

Funny how a lie is always quicker than the truth...

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

#416

Perspective from the trenches: I teach at a university that uses Canvas. We are in our final exams period right now. We got our first email (from Academic Affairs) notifying us that it was down at 5:17pm EDT this afternoon, with little info; followup emails were sent at 6:24 and 6:57 with more info, but mostly about how we would be compensating for it and not about what actually was going on (other than, "nationwide…

[flagged]

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

#417

Perspective from the trenches: I teach at a university that uses Canvas. We are in our final exams period right now. We got our first email (from Academic Affairs) notifying us that it was down at 5:17pm EDT this afternoon, with little info; followup emails were sent at 6:24 and 6:57 with more info, but mostly about how we would be compensating for it and not about what actually was going on (other than, "nationwide…

I don't understand what's the panic and doomerism about. Any competent IT team has backups and will be up and running as they go back to a state before the breach. This is HN. I'm disappointed that everyone is talking about losing grades and going back to pen and paper. I don't see how that could happen in 2026. And from the hacker's message itself, it's clear they want money in exchange for not releasing private inf…

Sometimes it is very hard to recover from the offlining of essential systems: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9pdld4y81o (Jaguar Land Rover, estimated cost in the billions)

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

#418
post #328

Somehow I have less distaste for ShinyHunters than I do for the companies who don't secure user data

When you picture the attacker, don't picture a bored nerdy teanager. Picture a selfish, $$ motivated psychopath. Let's not side with the parasites.

And lets not side with Canvas PR.

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

#419

Perspective from the trenches: I teach at a university that uses Canvas. We are in our final exams period right now. We got our first email (from Academic Affairs) notifying us that it was down at 5:17pm EDT this afternoon, with little info; followup emails were sent at 6:24 and 6:57 with more info, but mostly about how we would be compensating for it and not about what actually was going on (other than, "nationwide…

All these articles listing the American schools affected, "nationwide" outage reported, meanwhile hundreds of millions in the rest of the world affected.

Does anyone have a list of affected schools?

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