UCSD, San Diego State part of widespread attack on Canvas education platform

Hackers linked to the cybercriminal group ShinyHunters disrupted the Canvas learning platform Thursday, locking students at University of California San Diego and San Diego State University out of coursework and finals materials. A ransom message threatened to leak data from thousands of schools if payment was not made by May 12. Universities nationwide reported outages as Canvas owner Instructure placed the platform into maintenance mode while investigating the breach. Officials warned students to avoid suspicious links and phishing attempts.