Canvas is back online, but questions — and final exam disruptions — linger

Education Canvas is back online, but questions — and final exam disruptions — linger May 8, 20262:09 PM ET By  Rachel Treisman An image of a notice sent by Georgia Tech's information technology department warning users about the Canvas breach on Friday. Michael Warren/AP hide caption toggle caption Michael Warren/AP The online education platform Canvas went offline after a data breach on Thursday, temporarily leaving students and faculty at thousands of U.S. colleges — and K-12 schools — without access to course materials and communications during finals period. "I'm sure somewhere in the country when the outage happened, there probably were people actually taking final exams on the platform when it crashed," says Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Thirty million users — including at half of the higher education institutions in North America — rely on Canvas to manage courses, submit assignments, view grades and facilitate communication, according to its parent company, Instructure. Sponsor Message Education Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes But when Linker and many other users tried to do so on Thursday afternoon, they met a black screen and a warning message. "ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again)," it read. "Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some 'security patches.'" ShinyHunters is the same entity that took credit for a massive Ticketmaster data breach in 2024. Like many such groups, it's a cluster of young people working remotely together, "kind of like a ransomware gang," says Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security, which trains people and companies to defend themselves against hackers. ShinyHunters wrote on a threat intelligence website earlier this week that the initial breach on Saturday involved data — including private messages — from 275 million students, teachers and staff at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide. The group said...