University students across New Zealand cannot submit assignments or communicate with tutors after their online learning system was hit by a global data hack.<\/p>\n
Names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages between users could all be affected by the breach.<\/p>\n
Do you know more? Email<\/i><\/b>\u00a0luka.forman@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n
Learning platform Canvas was offline, and the university said it was working urgently on workarounds to minimise the impact on teaching and learning on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Canvas data was held by third party platform Instructure, which had its data hacked.<\/p>\n
Impacted universities included the University of Auckland, AUT and the Victoria University of Wellington.<\/p>\n
The University of Auckland said in a statement the university’s own systems had not been breached and no other systems were at risk.<\/p>\n
It said there was no suggestion that any student assessment data, passwords or sign-on credentials had been affected.<\/p>\n
An email sent to staff at AUT, confirmed it had been impacted by the hack also.<\/p>\n
It said the university’s ICT team were working with Instructure and would advise when more was known.<\/p>\n
It asked all staff to log out of Canvas.<\/p>\n
RNZ understands the hackers posted a message in the Canvas system and asked schools to contact them to reach a settlement.<\/p>\n
An AUT staffer told RNZ the platform was used to submit assignments, post readings and communicate with students.<\/p>\n
They said students often wrote messages to tutors on the platform with private information in them.<\/p>\n
University of Auckland student Tyler Jones said he had a 2500 word essay due next Wednesday, and issues with Canvas today had put a spanner in the works for him.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t been able to access any course materials – so like lectures or readings to actually help me finish assignments like that. So it’s already been quite disruptive.”<\/p>\n
The essay was for a film class, and he said the only way for him to access the movie he was writing about was through Canvas.<\/p>\n
The University of Auckland cancelled all tests and assessments scheduled for Friday, but Tyler said it was unclear whether students like him would get extensions.<\/p>\n
“Although they’re not due today, we still would have been affected by not being able to access Canvas to work on those assignments.”<\/p>\n
Many students were not too bothered by the privacy concerns around the breach, but they should be, he said.<\/p>\n
“They’re kind of thinking, what are they going to leak – your grades? But I think there’s a lot more on Canvas than students really realise.”<\/p>\n
Auckland University said some accommodations might be necessary where assessments were concerned.<\/p>\n
President of the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association Aidan Donoghue told\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0<\/i>the university had been quick to inform students it was confident no emails or passwords had been exposed by the breach.<\/p>\n
Students were not particularly concerned, because the rest of the data – Names, Student IDs and Messages between students and lecturers – was not particularly sensitive.<\/p>\n
“They’re very confident that there’s no indication that passwords or single sign-on credentials have been affected or assessment data itself, so yeah, it’s somewhat relieving.”<\/p>\n
Student’s were, however, concerned about what the breach of Nuku (what it calls its version of Canvas) might mean for submitting assignments on time, he said.<\/p>\n
The earliest time Nuku would be back online was Wednesday morning, Donoghue said.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, students’ course coordinators would make the call on what changes might need to be made to assignments.<\/p>\n
Lecture recordings and readings would still be available through the third-party sites, he said.<\/p>\n
“There’s definitely going to be considerations and changes … made to address the impact and the lack of ability to submit assignments because of this outage.”<\/p>\n
In a statement AUT said while the platform was down, students wouldn’t have to submit assessments, and extensions would be given based on how long it was down for.<\/p>\n
Canvas was used in 9000 education systems around the world.<\/p>\n
AFP was reporting, the hack had also hit US universities including Harvard, Stanford.<\/p>\n
According to the Harvard Crimson student newspaper and posts on social media, students attempting to access the system on Thursday saw a message from the hacking group saying servers belonging to Canvas’s parent company Instructure had “again” been breached.<\/p>\n
“Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some ‘security patches,'” the hackers said.<\/p>\n
“If any of the schools in the affected list are interested in preventing the release of their data, please consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact us privately… to negotiate a settlement.”<\/p>\n
The group warned it would release all stolen data if schools did not make contact by 12 May.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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