Canvas is back online after a nationwide cyberattack disrupted the learning platform for hours — but the outage hit hardest in California, where millions of students rely on it during finals week.
The platform, used by more than 30 million users and thousands of institutions, went offline on May 7 after a hack tied to the group ShinyHunters, locking students out of assignments, exams, and grades at a critical time in the semester.
Across California, campuses scrambled to respond as students reported being unable to submit finals or access course materials.
California universities and colleges affected by the Canvas hack
The outage stretched across nearly every major higher education system in California:
Specific campuses and systems reporting disruptions included:
Because Canvas is the primary system for coursework, communication and grading, even a short outage had immediate ripple effects across the state.
The timing — late in the semester — amplified the disruption.
Many California campuses and instructors:
Students reported being locked out of tests or unable to upload final papers, raising concerns about grading timelines and academic equity.
What triggered the outage?
The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the data breach at Instructure, the parent company and creator of the Canvas learning management system, according to The New York Times and CNN. Instructure said Canvas has more than 30 million active users worldwide and over 8,000 institutions as customers.
In a ransom letter shared on May 3 by Ransomware.live, a platform that tracks and monitors ransomware groups, ShinyHunters said it had accessed data from over 275 million people — including students, teachers, and other staff — across nearly 9,000 schools worldwide.
ShinyHunters has a history of compromising global corporations, Reuters reported. In April, the hacking group said it had stolen nearly 80 million business records from video game developer Rockstar Games, the maker of Grand Theft Auto.
Is Canvas safe to use in California now?
By late May 7, Instructure said in a post on its status page that Canvas was “now available for most users.” Earlier, the company said Canvas and other related sites had been placed “in maintenance mode,” and it was “investigating an issue where some users are having difficulties logging into Student ePortfolios.”
Contributing: Reuters
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Canvas back online after cyberattack disrupts California campuses
Reporting by Thao Nguyen, Carly Sauvageau and James Ward, USA TODAY NETWORK / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
