Canvas, a Learning Management System (LMS) used by thousands of schools and universities across the country, has restored its services after being taken down amid students’ Finals Weeks following a cybersecurity incident.
From Florida International University (FIU) to Miami Dade College (MDC), Broward County Public Schools (BCPS), and the University of Miami (UM), students across several colleges and high schools lost access to their coursework after a hacking group, known as ‘ShinyHunters’, reportedly breached the site.
On May 7, 2026, Broward County Public Schools announced it had temporarily blocked access to Canvas across the district to protect “BCPS systems and data.”
A post by the school district on X warned users not to log in from personal devices or click on “suspicious Canvas links/messages.”
FIU additionally posted a banner notification on its website informing students that Canvas was unavailable due to a “national cybersecurity incident.”
“FIU is actively coordinating with Instructure, the company that operates Canvas, to assess the situation and determine next steps,” a press release by the university stated.
Instructure Inc., Canvas’s developer, confirmed the system’s availability for most users in an update on May 7, 2026.
Screenshots provided by Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisofts, to The Associated Press (AP), showed that the group began threatening to leak the troves of data on May 3, 2026.
By May 8, 2026, Instructure and Canvas had been removed from a dedicated leak site created by the ransomware group on the dark web to publish stolen data.
Instructure Inc. confirmed that the group managed to gather some customer data, including names, email addresses, and student ID numbers, as well as messages between Canvas users.
Despite the capture of certain sensitive information, the company affirmed that neither passwords nor financial information was obtained.
The company has notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and an investigation remains ongoing.
