Thousands of Queensland university students have been locked out of assignments and lecture materials after online learning platform Canvas was shut down following a cyber attack.
The breach is linked to Education Queensland’s QLearn system, with hackers accessing names, email addresses and location data connected to about 1300 state schools in an attack uncovered this week.
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Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the breach did not involve financial information.
“It’s important that we reassure Queenslanders that any information that has been hacked is not financial details,” he said.
The attack has thrown schools and universities into chaos, with students unable to access lecture notes, tutorial content or submit assignments.
“I have an assignment due today that I can’t get any of the unit resources for, which is a little rough,” construction and surveying student Samantha Tait told 7NEWS.
Music and business student Emily Jones said the outage had disrupted nearly every part of university life.
“It’s got our tutorial content, and our lecture content on it, and it’s how we submit our assignments and everything,” she said.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) students were first alerted to the issue on Tuesday via email. The university initially said it was aware of the breach but had not been advised it was affected.
A second email sent on Friday morning informed students access to Canvas had been removed overnight.
Outside QUT’s Brisbane campus, students expressed frustration and confusion over the sudden shutdown.
“Tried to log in and it said service down, so that’s all I know,” one student said.
Another joked: “I’m probably going to get Yo-Chi and just wait for it to come back online I guess.”
Queensland Teachers’ Union president Cresta Richardson said the disruption would significantly impact classrooms.
“That will disrupt learning today and hopefully not by Monday,” she said.
The cyber-attack comes just months after the Queensland Auditor-General warned of growing third-party cyber security threats facing government systems.
Langbroek admitted the incident was “certainly a wake-up call”.
7NEWS understands the Education Department may have first been alerted to the breach early Wednesday morning, before the government publicly confirmed details on Thursday.
“I was advised late Wednesday and then we put the information out as soon as we could,” Langbroek said.
Authorities are still working to restore the system, with fears the outage could continue for days.
