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Canvas Outage Disrupts Access at Universities Worldwide
A hacking group called ShinyHunters breached the Canvas learning management system on May 8 2026 disrupting final exams and coursework at thousands of schools and universities worldwide. The group claimed to have stolen 6.65 terabytes of data from about 9000 institutions and threatened to release it unless a ransom was paid.
May 9, 6:00 AM·3m read4 sources
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Instructure, the Utah-based company that operates the Canvas education platform, said it detected unauthorized activity on April 29. The company immediately revoked access, launched an investigation, engaged outside forensic experts and notified law enforcement.
On May 8, some users logging into Canvas encountered a ransom note from the group ShinyHunters demanding bitcoin payment by May 12 or the group said it would leak data. The group had claimed in a May 3 statement that it obtained about 6.65 terabytes of Canvas data from 9,000 schools worldwide.
Instructure posted an update saying the platform was available for most users, though some institutions continued reporting outages into Friday and Saturday. The company later confirmed the breach and said it took immediate steps to contain the activity.
Canvas supports more than 30 million active users. Several universities made adjustments to final-exam and coursework schedules while the outage overlapped with end-of-term deadlines. Penn State canceled exams scheduled for Thursday night and Friday at its Pollock Testing Center before restoring service Friday afternoon.
The University of Illinois postponed final exams and due work for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mississippi State University moved Friday final exams to Saturday after students taking a meteorology course saw the ransom note. The University of Tennessee shifted all Friday finals to Saturday.
Rutgers University canceled Friday finals on its New Brunswick campus. The University of Sydney told students Canvas was unavailable and instructed them not to log in while it awaited further guidance from Instructure. Affected institutions also included the University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, and universities in the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Some students reported seeing the ransom note on their screens during exams. A meteorology student at Mississippi State said her initial reaction was that she herself had been hacked until she realized the entire class and professor had the same message.
