Canvas up again after hack. Do Brevard students have access?

Canvas, a cloud-based learning management platform used by Brevard Public Schools and higher education institutions in Brevard County, suffered a cyberattack on May 7 that disrupted access nationwide. The outage lasted hours, affecting millions of users worldwide, including students and teachers during finals week. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, confirmed the platform was fully operational by May 8 after initially placing it in maintenance mode for investigation. The hackers exploited a vulnerability in Canvas’s Free-For-Teacher accounts, which were temporarily disabled as a precaution. Instructure first detected unauthorized access on April 29 but took action only after the hackers altered login pages on May 8. A group called ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, though no evidence suggested Brevard Public Schools’ systems were compromised. Despite the broader outage, Brevard Public Schools kept Canvas disabled as a safety measure while Instructure resolved the issue. Janet Murnaghan, the district’s chief strategic communications officer, assured families and staff that no district data had been accessed. Meanwhile, Florida Tech and Eastern Florida State College reported minimal impact, with Florida Tech confirming Canvas was operational but encouraging users to reset passwords. The incident highlights ongoing cybersecurity risks for educational institutions relying on digital platforms. Instructure has since shut down the affected Free-For-Teacher accounts to prevent further breaches, though the full extent of the data exposure remains under investigation.