Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Students and faculty at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Alamo Colleges, and the University of the Incarnate Word were unable to log in to the learning platform Canvas Thursday, grounding education activity to a halt during final exams and end-of-term projects.
Canvas is used to upload class notes and lectures students may need to study for exams. It is also where many students are directed to upload assignments, and where professors record grades.
The disruption affected thousands of universities across the United States Thursday as part of an apparent extortion attempt by hackers. Instructure, the company that owns Canvas, eventually shut the platform down to deal with the breach.
Instructure restored access to Canvas for most users by Friday morning, but UT San Antonio officials said their technology department was still restoring aspects of the tool and advised users to continue avoiding use of the tool.
Colleges affected by the breach in San Antonio are rescheduling finals and pushing back assignment deadlines.
UT San Antonio told students assignments and final exams due on or before Friday, May 8 would be rescheduled.
“(T)his unexpected service disruption will not negatively impact students’ final assignments or grades. We intend to communicate a revised schedule for assignments and exams as soon as possible and will share an update on Friday. Further, for those who are graduating next week, commencement ceremonies will proceed as planned,” UTSA officials said in online update.
The Alamo Colleges District said Friday that access to their Canvas portal was “now fully operational.”
“Students impacted by the outage will not be negatively affected for assignments or coursework due during the disruptions period,” district officials said in an emailed announcement. “Faculty are encouraged to continue exercising reasonable discretion regarding assignments, exams and coursework for those affected.”
The University of the Incarnate Word is also rescheduling final exams and deadlines originally scheduled for Thursday and Friday. UIW also extended the deadline for faculty to submit grades to Tuesday, May 19.
“UIW Information Security has ensured that all user accounts are secure and are carefully monitoring the situation. Be aware that phishing attempts often follow incidents like this, so please remain vigilant and avoid clicking on suspicious emails or messages,” UIW officials said in an email to students and faculty Friday morning.”
Trinity University, St. Mary’s University and some area school districts also use Canvas.
San Antonio ISD officials said Friday morning they had “temporarily disabled” access to Canvas “out of an abundance of caution.”
“Our district accesses Canvas through our secure application portal, which limits the information shared for authentication purposes; however, we are conducting a thorough review to fully assess any potential exposure,” SAISD officials said on Facebook.
Trinity officials sent an email to students and faculty Friday saying that Trinity’s data was not affected by the hack on Canvas.
“The lack of access to Canvas at Trinity was due to the Instructure shutdown, not to an external attack. During this shutdown, Instructure identified the probable path hackers took and corrected the situation,” Trinity officials said in the email. “Again, there is no indication at this point that any Trinity data was downloaded. Trinity provides very limited information to Canvas. It does not include birthdates, Social Security numbers, other government identification, or financial information.”
Trinity spokesperson Clinton Colmenares said the university told faculty to extend deadlines if needed.
“Trinity was not directly affected by the hack,” Colmenares said in an email to TPR. “Some deadlines and finals might have been extended, but not on a university-wide basis.”
St. Mary’s did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
