CADEN HAYNOR / NEWS EDITOR

Students and faculty attempting to log into University websites this week were met with a “502 Bad Gateway” message and no access. This issue barred access for some students to their MySanDiego portals, including housing and study abroad, Google Drive, Gmail and Canvas.

The disruption affected University operations, including access to class materials and homework assignments.

USD sophomore Elle Lenihan described her experience with the disruption.

“People had to email their teachers and get extensions because they couldn’t get into their portals and it was really stressful,” Lenihan said. “I feel like our access to USD sites needs to be fixed. I am a lifelong hater of Duo Mobile and I avoid checking my assignments because I hate the two factor authentication so much. We need better ways to get to our portals.”

One of the sites affected was the housing portal, which students could not access as the housing deadline approached at 4 p.m. on March 2. As a result, USD extended the deadline to submit the 2026-2027 housing application one more day. USD Residential Life sent an email on March 3 advising students on a possible strategy to get around the issue.

“To get around the ‘502 Bad Gateway’ error, clear your browser history for the past week, including browsing data, cookies, and cached images/files,” the email read. “After clearing this, fully close your browser (such as Chrome) and reopen the housing portal in a new browser window. This should allow you to log in successfully.”

The USD Vista requested an in-person interview with a person in USD’s Information Technology Services (ITS). After University Public Affairs stated they would see if anyone was available for an in-person interview, USD ITS responded with a statement explaining how they located the issue and fixed it.

“After a thorough analysis, our technical staff pinpointed the problem: the latest version of the CAS authentication system (implemented a couple of weeks ago) uses more data in its cookies than the previous version and, over time (which varies by user), those cookies become inoperable,” ITS stated. “Once diagnosed, our staff increased the memory buffer size, which immediately resolved the issue. Please note that none of the USD systems were down during that time and most users did not experience this problem at all.”

Clearing the browsing history, cookies and cached images and files from a computer removes the sites users have visited, logs users out of sites, resets site specific preferences and forces the browser to reload fresh versions of pages.

When this occurs, saved passwords stay exactly how they were, but browsing history will be deleted and autofill may take some time to reset to normal typing patterns.

USD ITS, located in Maher Hall 187, is actively working on the issue and is available to assist students while the disruption persists.