Canvas hack: company pays criminals to delete students' stolen data

The company behind the popular Canvas software, which was hacked last week causing major disruption at thousands of universities and colleges, has paid the hackers not to publish stolen data online.The cyber-attack affected an estimated 9,000 institutions in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, with exams disrupted after the Canvas service went down.The hackers threatened to publish 3.5 terabytes of student and university data they had stolen in the breach.Instructure, the maker of Canvas, has now confirmed it has "reached an agreement" with the hackers, who have said they deleted the data and promised not to extort any students or institutions.Paying cyber criminals goes against the advice of law enforcement agencies around the world, as it can fuel further attacks and offers no guarantee the data has been deleted.In previous cases, criminals have accepted ransom payments but lied about destroying stolen data, instead keeping it for resale.For example, when the notorious LockBit ransomware group was hacked by the National Crime Agency, police found stolen data had not been deleted even after payments had been made.Instructure said in a statement on its website that protecting students' and education staff data was its primary motivation.