‘Critical infrastructure’: UI professor discusses risks from Canvas cyberattack | Science-technology
‘Critical infrastructure’: UI professor discusses risks from Canvas cyberattack | Science-technology
Publish Date: 2026-05-09 05:30:00
Source Domain: www.news-gazette.com
URBANA — Though the breach of learning management system Canvas may not involve Social Security numbers or bank-account info, the compromised data could be more sensitive than just homework assignments, said Masooda Bashir, a University of Illinois professor of information sciences and member of UI’s Information Trust Institute and principal investigator and director for the Illinois Cyber Security Scholarship Program.
“Your educational data actually has a lot of private information,” she said. “What courses are you taking? What subjects are you taking in class, in the university? How are you doing in your grades? And so a lot of personal and behavioral information is part of these records.”
This data can then be used for “future exploitation, phishing emails and other kinds of things, sophisticated things because they know so much about you now,” she added. Such information could also be used for stalking.
As of Friday morning, UI cybersecurity professionals and leaders continued to “evaluate the risk associated with bringing Canvas at Illinois back online,” officials said in a 10 a.m. update.
Updates on the incident can be found at go.illinois.edu/2026-canvas-incident and instructure.com/incident_update.
On Thursday night — the eve of the first day of finals — Vice Provost for IT and Chief Information Officer Mairéad Martin initially announced in a 4:30 p.m. massmail that Canvas was offline due to “an ongoing cybersecurity incident” and that course materials would be unavailable until the problem was fixed.
At 8:45 p.m., Provost John Coleman announced that all final exams and assignments for Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be postponed for all classes, even those that don’t use Canvas, “for the sake of consistency and clarity.”
University leaders will provide more information about next steps before…
