Canvas cyberattack ended, but California college students are still catching up

A student logs into Bruin Learn, UCLA’s Canvas-based learning management system.

Credit: Natalia Mochernak / EdSource

Although students around the country have regained access to Canvas following last week’s cyberattack, some are still grappling with the hack’s residual effects.

Instructure, Canvas’ parent group, said in a statement this week that they reached a deal with criminal extortion group ShinyHunters in which the group restored Canvas, returned stolen data to school districts and universities and destroyed any copies made. The hackers claimed they had breached data – including private conversations and information that identified students and faculty – of more than 275 million worldwide users at more than 9,000 schools.

Students at CSU campuses regained access to Canvas on Friday, May 8, but the software remained offline for University of California students through Saturday. Access to Canvas at some California community colleges, including Fresno City College, was not restored until Monday.

At UCLA, the Canvas hack suspended access to Bruin Learn — the campus’s primary learning platform — for three days. UCLA students use Bruin Learn, which is hosted on Canvas, to access grades, assignments and complete exams. 

Even after the hack was seemingly over, the fallout created its own ricochet of chaos. Some UCLA students received homework assignments with new deadlines and rescheduled exam dates, adding to their stress ahead of Memorial Day weekend and the start of final exams.

Students fear missing Memorial Day weekend plans

Shayla Kumaresan, a second-year computer science student, said she was supposed to take a midterm exam for her computer science class on Thursday. Because of the Bruin Learn shutdown, her professor rescheduled the exam to May 21, the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend. The professor moved the exam date two days early  after students complained.

Kumaresan said the original change in dates sparked outrage among some of her classmates, many of whom had non-refundable plane flights booked for the Memorial Day weekend and assumed they could skip class the Thursday prior to the holiday weekend. Computer science classes at UCLA are often recorded, which is why some students thought they could miss class. 

Dozens of classmates posted their complaints on Piazza, an online, anonymous discussion space for students and teachers.

“I also booked my Memorial Day travel based on the syllabus and the originally announced midterm dates at the beginning of the quarter,” one anonymous student said in a discussion thread on the platform. “Since all of the material is already posted on Piazza, I believe there would still be sufficient time to review, and I would greatly appreciate it if the midterm stayed on 5/14.” 

Kumaresan said the professor made the announcement to move the exam again on Piazza rather than through email, so she did not receive a notification of the change and almost missed the announcement.

“It was just a really confusing situation,” Kumaresan said. “I wasn’t sure what was happening and that was stressful.”

She added that with the midterm delayed by almost a week, she needed to study more material for it than originally planned because the exam is set to include an extra week of material.

At the same time, Kumaresan had to complete an assignment due last Friday that she could not access on Canvas but still had to submit on a separate platform called Gradescope. 

“My friends in the class all received the PDF for the assignment in an email from the teacher, but I didn’t for some reason,” she said. “I was freaking out, but thankfully my friend was able to forward me the assignment.”

Canvas hack leads to communication breakdowns

Alexandra Maggio, a second-year biochemistry student at UCLA, said she was unable to fully enjoy her Mother’s Day weekend at home with her family in San Diego due to the Bruin Learn shutdown. 

Maggio said she had multiple assignments due Saturday evening on the platform, which she had not started and could not access.  

A lack of communication from her professors about delaying the deadlines exacerbated her stress, she added. She only heard from her professors on Saturday afternoon. She worried the situation could have negatively impacted her grades. 

“It definitely was weird because I didn’t hear anything from my professors even though I had a lot of assignments coming up that I would want to access,” Maggio said. 

Many UCLA professors use Bruin Learn to access student emails or communicate with their students through announcements on the platform – both of which were unavailable amid the shutdown. 

Maggio said though her professors were initially unaware students could not access their assignments, they eventually realized the situation and delayed assignment deadlines. Maggio was grateful to her professors for their accommodations, but said the pushback of her homework assignments bled into the time she was supposed to study for upcoming midterms.

“I was supposed to be studying this whole week,” Maggio said. “But then I ended up doing those assignments Monday instead of getting them done over the weekend like I planned.”

Juan Muratalla, a student reporter at the Rampage, Fresno City College’s student newspaper, contributed to this article.

Natalia Mochernak is a second-year student at UCLA majoring in communication and Spanish. She is a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps.