Denison's Cybersecurity Team publishes their latest findings that impact the Denison community on the Threat Intelligence blog.
ITS is aware of a national Canvas service outage and is looking into the issue. Our teams are in constant contact with the service provider and are monitoring the situation in real-time. At this moment, we have no specific details regarding the duration of the outage or a definitive restoration window. We will provide updates as more information becomes available. Update: May 8, 2026 10:35am EDT At approximately 10:50pm last night (May…
Read more...Denison is aware of a data breach involving Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, our learning management system. This reported data breach is a nationwide event affecting multiple institutions. Currently, Denison has not been notified of any direct impact to our campus. Canvas continues to be available for use by faculty, staff, and students. Updates from Instructure are available on their status page. We will continue to monitor the situation and…
Read more...Denison ITS, in cooperation with a number of peer institutions, identified at least ten breached accounts across these institutions which were being used to maintain persistence in computing environments, especially in email tenants and file sharing applications. Disrupting these applications was an important step in disrupting BLUECRAB’s operations. In short, we disrupted their data source by removing their access to accounts they should not have had access to. These accounts…
Read more...Over the past three months, 25 Denison accounts were taken over through phishing attacks that tricked people into approving a fraudulent Duo request. While these attacks have not yet led to data loss, this type of attack increases the risk that sensitive information and systems could be compromised. Starting on Monday, March 23rd, a real-time security check will be added to the Duo login process to detect unusual login activity. If…
Read more...While today’s world is increasingly connected, it is also a common mechanism for threat actors to deliver malicious payloads via social engineering. Maliciously crafted advertisements can be used by threat actors to deliver their malware to unsuspecting victims. In a recent set of cyberattacks affecting multiple sectors, threat actors deployed their malware as a part of a fake AI tool installer, intending to install spyware and viruses on victim computers….
Read more...Denison’s cybersecurity intelligence has observed a threat actor that we now track as TANGERINECRAB attempting to steal money and financial information from victims. This scamming technique sends a Google Calendar invitation directly to your calendar, which bypasses email spam filters. By default, Google automatically adds calendar invites directly to your calendar. The attackers’ invitations appear genuine alongside your real events, classes, and meetings. The invitation sent in an email message…
Read more...In February 2026, an unknown threat actor attempted to execute a ransomware attack against a different institution of higher education, located in the United States. The ransomware was delivered through a fraudulent web chat portal. In a ransomware attack, a piece of malware that encrypts files is used to infect a computer. Once a file is encrypted, it cannot be read from or written to until the encryption is undone….
Read more...While Denison University ITS has not observed any foreign threat actors attempting to carry out cyberattacks against the University or its infrastructure, we are acutely aware that the current geopolitical situation and instability in the Middle East may have rippling effects on domestic infrastructure. After the US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, including cyberattacks carried out by Israeli government actors, Denison ITS is on alert to signs of retaliation…
Read more...Denison’s cybersecurity intelligence has identified an emerging threat: phishing attempts that use QR codes and an image to link to malicious content. At this time, we cannot attribute this recent attack to any specific threat actor or group. As a reminder, don’t scan QR codes that you don’t trust the source of, and be mindful of the sender line in an email message. Real communications from Denison will come from…
Read more...Public security reports have been released confirming the impact of an October 2025 ransomware attack on Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). Both attacks have been attributed to the same threat actor, publicly tracked as ShinyHunters. The extortion group released datasets allegedly containing over 1 million records from Harvard University and 1.2 million records from UPenn, claiming they include personal and donor data. Personally identifiable information (PII) and…
Read more...Contact the Service Desk by email, phone, or on the Self-Service Portal. You can also find them in Fellows Hall.
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