ShinyHunters Claims Cyber Attack on Canvas Software Disrupts Universities in US, Canada and Australia

A cyber attack struck universities and schools across the United States, Canada and Australia, sowing chaos and major disruptions during the critical end-of-year period.

The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, which knocked the academic platform Canvas offline this week. Thousands of schools and universities rely on Canvas, owned by Instructure.

By late Thursday, Instructure posted on its website that Canvas was available for most users. Some universities still faced outages on Friday.

The University of Sydney notified students Friday that Canvas was unavailable and told them not to try logging in. "We are one of approximately 9000 institutions around the world that are impacted by this outage, and we are still waiting for advice from Instructure," the university said in a website announcement.

The outage disrupted students' coursework and examinations, the university noted, calling it highly disruptive at a key point in the semester.

Penn State University messaged students Thursday that no one could access Canvas and a resolution was unlikely within 24 hours. The school canceled exams set for Thursday and Friday.

The University of British Columbia in Vancouver updated students Thursday evening that Canvas was unavailable due to a cyber breach at parent company Instructure. It urged students to log out right away.

The University of Toronto confirmed it was hit, stating multiple universities were affected.

Students at the University of California Los Angeles had trouble submitting assignments online via Canvas. The University of Chicago in Illinois temporarily disabled its Canvas page after reports of targeting.

The Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, shared a screenshot of a ShinyHunters message demanding ransom. The group urged the university to contact them privately to negotiate a settlement and avoid data release.

Screenshots showed threats starting Sunday, with deadlines on Thursday and May 12, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emisoft, in comments to the Associated Press.

The attack occurred the same day Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote to the Trump administration, calling for stronger defenses against cyber risks amid fast-evolving AI.