More than 153,000 students and staff from four tertiary institutions in Hong Kong have been affected by a data breach on the online learning management platform Canvas, an investigation by the city’s privacy watchdog has found.

Nearly four months after the data breach was discovered, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) said on Thursday that the incident stemmed from “vulnerabilities relating to a third-party platform”, although it did not affect the internal systems of the four institutions.