This post was updated May 7 at 5:08 p.m.
A cyberattack impacting Bruin Learn – as well as thousands of other schools which use Canvas – barred students from accessing the platform Thursday.
Bruin Learn was inaccessible as of 2:40 p.m, and the website said it was undergoing scheduled maintenance Thursday. Shiny Hunters – a criminal extortion group – claimed on the Canvas website around 1 p.m. to have stolen schools’ data.
The cybercrime group said on the website that Instructure – Canvas’s parent company – has until the end of May 12 to contact them before they release the information.
UCLA has disabled local access to Bruin Learn, said Erin Sanders O’Leary, the vice provost for teaching and learning, and Lucy Avetisyan, the associate vice chancellor and chief information officer, in a Thursday afternoon email to students.
UCLA Media Relations referred The Bruin to a Thursday security advisory from the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer in response to a request for comment. Instructure is working to reach a resolution, according to the advisory.
Avrin Pasebani, a graduate student in urban planning, said he was about to start working on his midterm presentation when Canvas shut down. He added that the website interruption left him feeling unmotivated to do his class work.
“A lot of us are trying to make do catching up on other readings we have downloaded,” he said. “But we feel very limited in what we can do right now.”
Spencer Wang, a first-year computer science student, said he is not concerned about his information being leaked because cyberattacks have happened at other universities, such as Columbia University and New York University.
Thomas Garbelotti, the director and chief information officer of Humanities Technology, said in an email to staff that he advises people not to try to access Bruin Learn, as it could give the hackers their personal information.
Students can access course materials through the UCLA Store page and applicable publisher websites, the Bruin One Access Team said in a Thursday email.
Past targets of the group have included Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Contributing reports by Sophia Pu, Daily Bruin contributor
