The maker of the education platform Canvas said it has reached a deal with a hacking group that broke into its systems, stole data and threatened to share it publicly unless it received a ransom payment by Tuesday.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company, Instructure, said in a statement Monday.
The company did not disclose whether the deal included a ransom payment.
Almost 9,000 schools and 275 million people were affected by the breach last week, including students, teachers, faculty and staff whose personally identifying information was taken. The security incident took Canvas offline at a time when students across the country were taking finals.
The deal with the hackers included the return of stolen data and digital evidence that copies had been deleted, Instructure said.
Instructure said the hackers got into the system by abusing free accounts it offers to teachers. The company said that it has disabled that kind of account but that its platform is otherwise back online.
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