View of Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA [AP=Yonhap News]

Universities are experiencing significant disruption to their academic schedules as Canvas, an online learning platform used in U.S. higher education, was hit by a hacking attack.

The hacking attack, in particular, has coincided with the university finals period, leading to the postponement of numerous exam schedules.

According to reports from Bloomberg News and the Associated Press on the 8th (local time), Instructure, the U.S. educational technology company operating Canvas, announced that its service was temporarily suspended due to a cyberattack by hackers the previous day but has since recovered most of its functionality.

Canvas is a platform used for the overall management of academic operations, including accessing course materials, submitting assignments, taking exams, and checking grades. Thousands of schools worldwide, including those in the United States, utilize it.

The company stated that hackers exploited vulnerabilities in specific instructor accounts to gain access to some systems. Information such as user names, email addresses, student identification numbers (IDs), and inter-user messages were stolen.

However, the company explained that no evidence of passwords, birth dates, or financial information being leaked has been found yet.

The hacker group ShinyHunters, based in the U.S. and the UK, claimed responsibility for the hack through a dark web post, but Instructure has not officially confirmed this.

ShinyHunters typically steals victim data and then demands payment. In this case, they are threatening to leak data from approximately 9,000 schools and 275 million individuals if payment is not made.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledged the disruption, stating it "affected schools, educational institutions, and students across the United States."

The FBI has also requested victims to report the incident and advised against paying any ransom demands from the hackers.

In reality, portal outages have occurred at universities worldwide, including Stanford University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Harvard University in the U.S., as well as the University of Oslo in Norway and the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Universities are rescheduling their final exams one after another, taking into account the repercussions of the hacker attack.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus and the University of Illinois, among others, have postponed all exams scheduled for the three days starting from today.

Danny Jenkins, CEO of cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker, commented, "The attack occurred at a time when students are preparing for final exams and graduation. Students are experiencing great anxiety, and this is a result intended by the attackers to pressure the schools and Instructure."