Cyberattack targets a system used by U.S. schools and universities

A system used by thousands of U.S. schools and universities went offline on Thursday during a cyberattack, as students were preparing for final exams.

Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said a hacking group called ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for breaching Instructure, the company behind the Canvas learning management system. Instructure did not immediately respond to a request for comment or to questions about whether the system was taken offline as a precaution or because the intruders caused the outage.

Connolly noted that the hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide had been affected, with access to billions of private messages and other records.

Instructure did not post about the attack on its social media accounts. Its Canvas system is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more.

Universities and school districts quickly began notifying students and parents.