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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

#621

Post by LocalH »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #159
brendanyounger wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People forget how barbaric medicine has historically been.

Just like 100 years from now, many of today's medical practices will also be seen as barbaric.

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

#622

Post by teiferer »

Poacher5 wrote: post #377
teiferer wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a CS graduate can't figure out some simple gmail labels and filters then they should not be awarded that degree. Plain and simple. It's not rocket science.

And there are no other students at any college other than CS students? I'm not sure why a biologist or a literature student would need to be au fait with Google's admittedly fairly unfriendly email management setup.

1. This was a response to a CS professor, so specific to CS students.

2. Yes, configuring gmail filters should be doable for anybody with a university degree. It's really not hard.

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

#623

Post by teiferer »

sillywabbit wrote: post #551
denkmoon wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital literacy is important to every field. Email filters are not some arcane computer science concept, they are the modern equivalent of filing physical mail into the right folder/pidgeon hole/inbox/whatever. Biology is a great example because of just how important digital record management is to experimentation in the field.

I don't think you've seen many biology field data sets.

All biology folks I'm interacting with are juggling excel sheets all day.

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

#624

Post by SoftTalker »

> ShinyHunters ... said its data leak site contains 9,000 schools, including data belonging to 275 million students

Brought up a question I've had every time I read about these leaks... what kind of pipes do these shadowy groups have that they can grab all this data? I've spent days waiting just downloading a few 100 of GB from OneDrive. How do they grab all this data, are they just slowly gathering it for months via a compromised desktop somewhere, or if not, are the companies not monitoring for unexpected massive amounts of outbound traffic from their database or file servers?

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

#625

Post by lokar »

setopt wrote: post #618
lokar wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a ugrad, and later a PhD student teaching, everything is explained the first day. If you can figure it out you just fail the class (or go to office hrs to get help, etc).

As an associate professor, I do explain things the first day, but I am certainly not permitted to fail students as a consequence of not checking their email daily. Even if they didn’t hand in an assignment at all, without any reason provided, I’m required by regulation to offer them a second chance to pass that assignment. The students’ rights are quite strong here (Northern Europe), which I generally support, but it…

Interesting. I remember very strict rules on turning in programming assignments (as a student, and later TA). On time, printed properly, in a specific envelope, labeled as specified in the right location.

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

#626

Post by lokar »

recursive wrote: post #593
lokar wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it to filter recruiters, if they can’t accept (a well typeset) PDF résumé, and insist on Word I know to skip them.

So are you getting a lot of offers this way? Anyway, I admire your dogma.

Well, I’m retired now. I only had 4 jobs after finishing my BS.

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

#627

Post by walrus01 »

chii wrote: post #572
walrus01 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running on prem or homegrown systems used to be considered a core competency of having a computer science department and a campus-wide IT/networking staff at a university. In the environment that exists today in academia, for instance, BSD would never be created because somebody could just pay a third party external vendor for some packaged product. What happened in the past 20 years to change that? I really wonder.

But you don't extend that same argument for an agricultural research department by asking them to have a homegrown farm for supplying the university with food! I dont think a competent CS department requires their being a homegrown or on-prem system for use in the university. That could happen, but if resources could be better spent by purchasing rather than building, then that should be the correct choice.

Well, even in the mid 80s for example when many universities and their CS departments were heavily into DIY in house software development, none of them were expected to write all of the software used by all of the university. Ordinary workstation platforms were still purchasing MS-DOS 3.3 licenses with their hardware or Mac OS with their macs, etc. And things like Microsoft Office, Wordperfect.

Universities which do have large agriculture/farming related departments often operate their own small scale test/development/experimental farm.

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

#628

Post by dotancohen »

GTP wrote: post #588
dotancohen wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Thunderbird on both the desktop and Android. Love it. Perhaps Outlook is difficult to configure. Thunderbird is intuitive.

Yes, every now and then I think I should try it on Android as well, but still have to do it. It would be great if there was the possibility to sync filters across devices, in a similar way of using your Firefox account to sync extensions. Do you know if this is possible?

I don't think it's possible.

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

#629

Post by bartread »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #202
blahedo wrote: post #176

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…

> the students themselves don't have the artifacts to resubmit via email because they were done in Canvas It’s so simple to send an e-mail to the student with relevant records on completion of a quiz or whatnot. They don’t do it, because they want to control the data. (And universities don’t insist on it for who knows what reason.)

> They don’t do it, because they want to control the data.

Ironically, this incident shows they don’t have control of anything.

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

#630

Post by organsnyder »

SoftTalker wrote: post #624

> ShinyHunters ... said its data leak site contains 9,000 schools, including data belonging to 275 million students Brought up a question I've had every time I read about these leaks... what kind of pipes do these shadowy groups have that they can grab all this data? I've spent days waiting just downloading a few 100 of GB from OneDrive. How do they grab all this data, are they just slowly gathering it for months via…

I'd assume they have a botnet to parallelize it. Though depending on where you live (not that they'd be using their own machines) fast pipes are fairly common—I have a 5gbps symmetrical fiber connection to my home in Michigan.
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