A massive cyberattack targeting Canvas, one of the world’s largest online learning platforms, disrupted access for thousands of schools and universities across the United States during finals week, leaving students and faculty scrambling for alternatives.

The attack has been claimed by hacking group ShinyHunters, a cybercrime collective previously linked to several high-profile breaches involving global corporations and educational institutions. It was one of the bad actors responsible in the Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack that happened in September. 

The group alleged it had breached Instructure, Canvas’ parent company, and threatened to leak large amounts of stolen data if demands were not met.  

Canvas is widely used by universities for assignments, lecture material, quizzes, grading systems, and communication between students and faculty. Institutions including Harvard University, Duke University, UCLA, and the University of Pennsylvania reported disruptions linked to the incident.  

Students panic, joke, and celebrate as exams face disruption

The outage came at a particularly chaotic time as many colleges across the US entered final exam season. Students flooded social media platforms with reactions ranging from panic to relief after suddenly losing access to coursework, grades, and study material.  

Some students complained that they could no longer access lecture slides or revision notes days before exams, while others joked that the outage had temporarily delayed assignments and submissions. A number of posts online described the incident as “the best timing possible” for exhausted students nearing the end of the semester, even as universities worked to restore systems.

Faculty members also expressed concern over the scale of disruption. Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on X that students had relied on Canvas for “every reading from the semester” and called the outage a situation where academia was effectively “dead in the water”.  

Several universities issued advisories to students and faculty, while some institutions reportedly postponed exams and deadlines due to the outage.

Hackers claim billions of messages were accessed

Cybersecurity researchers and student newspapers reported that ShinyHunters claimed to have stolen nearly 3.6 terabytes of data, including billions of private messages exchanged between students, teachers, and staff. The group alleged the breach could affect up to 275 million users globally.  

Instructure said it was investigating the incident and temporarily placed parts of Canvas into maintenance mode. The company stated there was no evidence that passwords, financial information, or government-issued IDs had been exposed, though names, email addresses, student IDs, and messages may have been compromised.