Mass. schools hit by nationwide Canvas cybersecurity incident during final exams The learning management system Canvas suffered a nationwide outage Thursday, causing a disruption on school campuses across the country. According to several Massachusetts schools, the platform was affected by a cybersecurity incident, which rendered the site useless for users. The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Instructure, the company behind Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the system was taken down as a precaution or because the hackers knocked it offline. Screenshots he provided showed that the group began threatening on Sunday to leak a trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. Connolly said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing. UMass Lowell announced that Friday's scheduled final exams would be delayed until Monday due to the outage. Northeastern University also addressed the outage, confirming on its website "that Instructure, the company that provides Canvas, is responding to a major cybersecurity incident affecting its platform across the education sector." Northeastern students and faculty were advised to refrain from using the platform until the issue was resolved. The student newspaper at Harvard reported that the system was down there, too. And public school districts also sought to reassure parents, with officials in Spokane, Washington, writing that they aren't “aware of any sensitive data contained in this breach.” Connolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to a other attacks, including one aimed at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster subsidiary. Instructure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about whether the