Cyberattack Disrupts Canvas Platform Used by Schools Across U.S.

Schools and universities across the United States continued to adjust operations on Friday following a cyberattack that disrupted the Canvas online education platform. The incident began Thursday afternoon when operators shut down the system after detecting a hacker’s intrusion.

Canvas provides digital course infrastructure for instructors and students, allowing teachers to upload materials, communicate with students and grade assignments while students access resources, complete exercises and submit work. “It’s quite literally everything,” Rutgers University sophomore Travis Park, a civil engineering major, told NBC News on Friday.

” The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed in a May 3 statement that it had obtained about 6.65 terabytes of Canvas data from 9,000 schools worldwide. On Thursday, users logging into the platform reported seeing a note from the hackers warning that all data would be leaked if demands were not met by the end of Tuesday.

Late Thursday night, Canvas, which has more than 30 million active users globally from kindergartens to Ivy League universities, began coming back online, according to its Utah-based parent company Instructure. Many students and faculty continued to experience effects on Friday.

Universities reported varied disruptions.

Penn State restored its Canvas system Friday afternoon after cancelling exams scheduled for the Pollock Testing Center on Thursday night and Friday. The University of Illinois postponed final exams and assignments due Friday, Saturday and Sunday. UNLV resumed operations Friday morning but permitted students to submit work due Thursday, Friday or Saturday late.

Mississippi State moved Friday final exams to Saturday, while the University of Tennessee shifted all Friday finals to Saturday. Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland kept its Saturday and Monday-through-Thursday final exam schedule but urged students and teachers to print reading materials from Canvas as a precaution.

Rutgers canceled finals set for Friday on its New Brunswick campus with no immediate makeup date announced. Park noted that while he lives nearby in Northern New Jersey, many classmates from other parts of the country had planned to depart campus immediately after their last exams, leaving those plans uncertain.

At the University of Iowa, the outage interrupted grading for political science professor Sara Mitchell. m. m. Thursday before returning online. Mitchell, who teaches international relations including topics on modern warfare and Israeli-led cyberattacks on Iran, said the incident provided students with direct experience of cyber disruption.

She added that the event highlighted broader vulnerabilities. “I mean our entire financial system is vulnerable, our electrical grid is vulnerable especially when these cyberattacks get more sophisticated,” Mitchell said. The company said the intrusion was first detected on April 29.

Instructure stated it “detected unauthorized activity in Canvas” that day, immediately revoked access, launched an investigation, engaged outside forensic experts and notified law enforcement. Instructure later issued a statement that “Instructure recently identified unauthorized activity in Canvas LMS.