Mohawk College MyCanvas learning system back online after third-party cybersecurity incident

Mohawk College was one of at least 9,000 educational institutions to be affected Thursday after an online education tool was hit with a cyberattack.

Canvas — not to be confused with Canva — is an online platform used by schools, colleges and universities used to manage several aspects of instruction.

The platform acts as a gradebook, a learning hub housing digital lectures and course materials, and facilitates as a message platform between students and instructors.

By late Thursday, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, said the platform was available again for most users.

Mohawk College told CHCH News in a statement that access to their platform, MyCanvas, was restored as of Friday morning.

Sean Coffey, the director of communications with Mohawk College, says no other college systems were impacted from the cyberattack, and students have been informed and are being kept up to date.

They say information provided to Mohawk staff by Instructure, including passwords, sign-on credentials, birth dates, home addresses and financial information was not affected.

A threat analyst from the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft says the hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach.

ShinyHunters has a history of compromising large corporations, including stealing over 78 million business records from video game developer Rockstar Games last month, and holding the data for ransom.

With files from The Canadian Press.

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