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A widespread cyberattack on Instructure’s Canvas learning platform disrupted classes, exams and communications at roughly 9,000 schools worldwide in late April and early May 2026, industry and university statements show.
Instructure detected unauthorized activity on April 29 and took Canvas offline after hackers altered pages seen by logged-in users.
The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility, posting that it had exfiltrated data relating to about 275 million people and set a May 12 deadline to negotiate or publish stolen files.
Instructure said the breach appears to have exposed identifying information — names, email addresses, student ID numbers and user messages — but not passwords, birthdates, government identifiers or financial data.
The company restored Canvas access for most users by May 8 after disabling Free-for-Teacher accounts that were reportedly exploited.
Many universities and K-12 districts nonetheless kept systems offline or limited access while investigating; several schools cancelled or postponed finals.
Reports indicate some institutions contacted the hackers or intermediaries to seek to prevent a public leak.
Security firms and school IT teams warned of ongoing risks, including phishing and possible follow-on intrusions.
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The comments underscore that vendor concentration created a single point of failure: the outage is causing immediate academic disruption and heavy extra work for staff, and while it will likely trigger deadline relief and scrutiny, a rapid market shift away from Canvas is unlikely due to high technical and financial switching costs.







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