Canvas system used by thousands of schools is back online after a cyberattack disrupted studies

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Updated 9:38 AM CDT, May 8, 2026

A system that thousands of schools and universities use to support instruction was back online Friday after it went down during a cyberattack that created chaos as students tried to study for final exams.

The hacking group named ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, said in an update late Thursday that the system was available for most users.

Canvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said.

Screen shots Connolly provided showed that the group began threatening Sunday to leak the trove of data. By Friday, Instructure and Canvas had been removed from a dedicated leak site created by the ransomware group on the dark web to publish stolen data.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/canvas-cyberattack-outage-college-446c240d5aeb1b1a1e3795fb92237563

[hlthe2b]

1. This has freaked out everyone in academia but far beyond that because of the name "CANVAS"--

which became the new name for Public Service Credit Union--one of the largest throughout the South. I stopped into the lobby of my local Canvas Credit Union branch a couple of days ago and they had some really freaked out people--mostly older who probably don't use online access (a statement appeared on their website to clear the confusion, if they had).

But what a cluster.

[Prairie Gates]

2. So they paid the ransom?