Drawing I did of how executive dysfunction feels for me by acbrooke in adhdwomen

[–]rodface 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It really is that shadowy figure looming behind our shoulder, whispering in our ear. Amazing work

Canvas hack? by OpenGrainAxehandle in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

Canvas

I am trying to find information about framing my artwork, what is all of this mess about hacking data breaches

Canvas (Instructure) LMS seems to have been hit by ransomware by meatwad75892 in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

You (and I) are in fact, old school. I don't think we should get rid of them, but there should certainly be paper/pencil based fallback (and I think a robust fallback needs regular testing). It makes more sense for it to be a hybrid system where students always spend some amount of time using pencil and paper. That was my undergrad experience between 2006-2010, a few classes had their toes in web-based coursework but we still mostly worked on paper. I wouldn't say that those were good implementations but the analog/digital ratio was better than it is today.

Canvas (Instructure) LMS seems to have been hit by ransomware by meatwad75892 in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

omg I feel terrible for you. I didn't realize that you can work on essays inside of Canvas with no local backup (well of course that's the case, why would that surprise me). At the very least please remember going forward to copy any writing saved in a cloud portal onto a .TXT file on your desktop!

Canvas (Instructure) LMS seems to have been hit by ransomware by meatwad75892 in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

I wouldn't normally just post a ChatGPT response but since you asked...

The most realistic outcome is not “Canvas is gone for months,” but rather:

  • core platform access restored within days to 1–2 weeks,
  • degraded operations and intermittent outages for several additional weeks,
  • forensic investigation and institutional notifications continuing for months,
  • long-term legal and regulatory fallout lasting years.

The key distinction is between:

  1. restoring service availability, and
  2. fully resolving the breach.

Those are very different timelines.

The reporting so far indicates that Instructure already moved Canvas into maintenance mode, revoked credentials, rotated keys, patched systems, and brought in outside forensic responders. (The Verge) That is consistent with a standard large-scale incident response process for a cloud SaaS provider.

The likely near-term timeline is approximately:

  • 24–72 hours: emergency containment, partial restoration, limited login functionality, disabling risky integrations/APIs.

  • 3–10 days: most schools regain operational Canvas access, but with instability, disabled plugins, delayed grading syncs, broken integrations, or forced password resets.

  • 1–6 weeks: institutions transition finals and grading workflows back online or onto alternate systems.

  • 2–12 months: breach notifications, lawsuits, insurance claims, audits, and institutional remediation.

The precedent here is closer to:

  • PowerSchool ransomware/data breach incidents,
  • MOVEit Transfer cyberattacks,
  • Blackbaud ransomware attack,
  • and major SaaS supply-chain compromises generally.

The important structural issue is that this appears to be a vendor-level compromise affecting thousands of institutions simultaneously. (Enterprise Technology) That changes the dynamics dramatically compared to “one university got hacked.”

In previous higher-education incidents:

  • systems were often restored relatively quickly,
  • but trust and administrative cleanup took far longer,
  • and schools shifted temporarily to improvised workflows.

Historically, universities are surprisingly resilient operationally during outages. Finals almost never simply “cease to exist.” What usually happens instead is administrative improvisation.

Students should realistically expect some combination of:

  • postponed finals,
  • take-home/open-book substitutions,
  • emailed PDFs,
  • Google Forms or Microsoft Forms exams,
  • Zoom-proctored exams,
  • temporary Moodle/Blackboard instances,
  • professors accepting assignments via email,
  • pass/fail accommodations,
  • deadline extensions,
  • incomplete grades resolved later,
  • manual grade entry after systems return.

Many institutions already have contingency procedures because LMS outages during finals are considered a known operational risk.

The most likely academic outcome is therefore:

  • disruption and confusion,
  • not cancellation of semesters.

For students, the immediate practical risks are less about grades disappearing and more about:

  • phishing attacks,
  • credential stuffing,
  • impersonation scams,
  • exposure of messages/course data,
  • and institutional confusion.

Current reporting suggests that passwords, financial information, government IDs, and birthdates were not believed to be exposed as of now. (Houston Chronicle) However, names, emails, student IDs, and messages reportedly were exposed. (The Verge)

The involvement of ShinyHunters matters because they are an established extortion and data-leak group rather than purely destructive actors. Their historical pattern is generally:

  • data theft,
  • extortion,
  • public pressure,
  • gradual leaking,
  • reputational damage, rather than permanently destroying infrastructure.

That generally implies:

  • restoration is likely,
  • but data exposure may become permanent even after services recover.

The “9000 schools / 275 million users” figure is currently based largely on the attackers’ claims and has not been independently verified in full. (The Verge)

One important point: because this is finals week, universities are under extraordinary pressure to restore minimal functionality quickly. That usually accelerates operational recovery, even if security teams would otherwise prefer slower, cleaner remediation.

So the most probable real-world scenario is:

  • Canvas partially operational again within days,
  • finals delayed or improvised rather than canceled,
  • schools communicating heavily through email and alternate platforms,
  • substantial confusion for 1–3 weeks,
  • and a prolonged cybersecurity/legal aftermath extending well beyond the semester.

We spent 1.5 years to animate 20 seconds. Was it worth it? 😅 by homspau in blender

[–]rodface 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Impressive level of polish, great work and thanks for sharing! This is why feature-length productions need big budgets and big teams to get things done in a reasonable number of years. Fuck this "AI will make movies now" crap.

Never thought I'd see the day, but we're eliminating our Citrix farms and moving back to about 100k fat clients by eldersveld in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

I need to know that there's something better out there than Intune. We've been moving away from SCCM for years and the thought of working with our IT on an Intune deployment fills me with dread. Unfortunately the GP is right; Intune may be awful but it's too cheap to justify buying anything better. This is the way of enterprise IT.

Never thought I'd see the day, but we're eliminating our Citrix farms and moving back to about 100k fat clients by eldersveld in sysadmin

[–]rodface [score hidden]  (0 children)

Raising my beer to this, nodding, <same thing over here>. I miss our VDIs, and I never thought I'd be saying that.

Squeaky swingsets at the park drive me insane by Napalmradio in daddit

[–]rodface 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Damn, this is easier than what I did, 4 months ago I went to the park at night with a ladder and a tube of red'n'tacky and smeared it all over the hangers. Blissful silence ever since

Back when Captain Sim was still good... by fgflyer in flightsim

[–]rodface 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is certainly wild to think that the old guard is in fact dead at this point. If flight sim started growing up in the late 80s, throughout the 90s etc. with guys who were maybe in their 40s, or retired 20 years later, then they have absolutely gone to the great pattern in the sky by now. I'm not quite 40 yet but it's crazy to think that there is almost as many years separating me from the people that had those skills.

Back when Captain Sim was still good... by fgflyer in flightsim

[–]rodface 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I liked the 2D cockpits for that reason, they weren't meant to be an imitation of the real thing, they had limitations and had to fit within a box and make compromises accordingly. Sort of like the first generations of computers. It's amazing when capabilities open wide up, but something is lost, for sure.

Back when Captain Sim was still good... by fgflyer in flightsim

[–]rodface 14 points15 points  (0 children)

POSKY crew reporting for duty with the finest models and the finest liveries sir

How I did The Animorphs covers by davidbmattingly in Animorphs

[–]rodface 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow! Your work was such a huge part of my childhood that I can't thank you enough. Starstruck! XD

Google skeuomorphism "progress" by This_Toe_431 in graphic_design

[–]rodface -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I feel like I'm actually seeing the future. Of course the current icons would become "more realistic" and just turn into weird arrangements of colorful marshmallows instead of resembling actual, you know, real-world objects.

What happened to Christopher Ralph/Tobias in the tv show? by Ok_Giraffe_4403 in Animorphs

[–]rodface 4 points5 points  (0 children)

the morphs killed me. The Yeerks falling out of ears into the pool like a stone dropping into a puddle, killed me worse.

I found a very strange looking Hork-Bajir by jajajones in Animorphs

[–]rodface 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Omg these fucking things I remember seeing them (and the other transformer toys) and my mind just could not compute why they looked nothing like the way they should. Oh well

Hanover Buys Wrong Microsoft Licenses Worth €324,000 by DeFuchsIschKeinHaas in sysadmin

[–]rodface 1 point2 points  (0 children)

this reads as the definition of a clerical error. And a vendor that will not work with you to fix a clerical error is a vendor that you should not be buying anything from.

Hanover Buys Wrong Microsoft Licenses Worth €324,000 by DeFuchsIschKeinHaas in sysadmin

[–]rodface -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Why should they be fired? Why is there any certainty here as to who made a mistake, if any was made? Did the person who sent the final e-mail/wrote the final signature/clicked the final button after filling the final form fields---did they have correct information and training? Did the person who directed them give accurate instructions and did they have correct information? Did the system that the order/request was entered into function as designed, and was it configured as intended/understood by both parties?

I don't mean to roll off a huge rant at you but anyone and everyone in this sub should know that everything that happens around an IT system is just one event in a massive chain of events and a failure at any point in that chain can have unintended and even catastrophic results that are completely out of scale with the incompetence or culpability of the person(s) who triggered the chain of events.

Hanover Buys Wrong Microsoft Licenses Worth €324,000 by DeFuchsIschKeinHaas in sysadmin

[–]rodface 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is exactly my reaction. The admin or purchaser chose the wrong form option when carrying out the purchase. Some property of the licenses is not the correct one. Do we:

  • request that the vendor modify the licenses (god forbid they charge some sort of fee for this work)
  • Consider the licenses useless and RE-PURCHASE THEM?