Canvas Hack Aftermath: Congress Wants Instructure to Answer Questions
Key takeaways
- The US House of Representatives is demanding testimony from representatives of Instructure, the twice-hacked company that owns the education platform Canvas.
- Instructure revealed this week that it had reached a deal with the hacker group Shiny Hunters, under which the hackers would destroy copies of user data and agree not to extort users.
- The House Homeland Security Committee said it is investigating the hack alongside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The US House of Representatives is demanding testimony from representatives of Instructure, the twice-hacked company that owns the education platform Canvas. Lawmakers are seeking answers to explain the company's delayed response to cyberattacks that enabled bad actors to scrape the personal information of millions of students and teachers nationwide.
Instructure revealed this week that it had reached a deal with the hacker group Shiny Hunters, under which the hackers would destroy copies of user data and agree not to extort users. ShinyHunters had hacked the platform first in April and again last week, and claimed to have targeted thousands of universities and school districts.
The House Homeland Security Committee said it is investigating the hack alongside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA has been working with Instructure as one of the "outside forensics experts" the company refers to in its incident FAQs, helping to "contain the activity, investigate and apply additional safeguards."