Canvas cybersecurity breach impacts New Hanover County Schools, UNCW
Canvas cybersecurity breach impacts New Hanover County Schools, UNCW
https://www.wect.com/2026/05/09/canvas-cybersecurity-breach-impacts-new-hanover-county-schools-uncw/
Publish Date: 2026-05-08 22:01:00
Source Domain: www.wect.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – A large cybersecurity attack impacted several schools, including New Hanover County Schools and UNCW.More than 9,000 schools across the globe were affected by the data breach. The hack targeted Canvas, an online learning platform used by thousands of schools across the country. It’s where students can contact their teachers, submit assignments and access their grades.Patrick Jones, vice president of Logically, one of the largest cybersecurity services companies in the United States, said he believes the community should be concerned because the majority of users on Canvas are minors in school.“This is not your run-of-the-mill attack. This is a massive attack and it’s definitely hit our nation hard,” Jones said. “That means hundreds of millions of users, they’re at risk. And the thing that we really need to be thinking about, the majority of them are minors.”Jones said the timing of these attacks isn’t random.“For a lot of the schools, it was finals time, right? So now that literally limited the students ability to then speak to their professors, submit assignments, submit finals,” Jones said. “That’s exactly what hackers do. They’re going to hit you at the point when you can’t have any disruption, so then it’s going to make the organization or institution react and do exactly what they want, pay ransom.”New Hanover County Schools said in a statement that information identified as compromised in the breach includes names, student ID numbers, messages between users and email addresses.“Importantly, there is currently no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government-issued identifiers, financial information, or Social Security numbers were involved,” the statement said.UNCW shared that Canvas is back up and fully operational with additional monitoring and safeguards in place.Jones said the group behind the attack, called Shiny Hunters, follows a specific pattern.“Their playbook is simple: steal data, create public panic, and press the victims to pay,” Jones said.In the past, Shiny Hunters has also targeted Ticketmaster, Microsoft, AT&T and other companies.Jones said the incident is a reminder for individuals and companies to boost cybersecurity.“Cybersecurity is no longer optional. And how you should be looking at this, it’s not a matter of if it happens, it’s a matter of when it happens,” Jones said.Jones recommends always selecting multi-factor authentication when signing into accounts. For companies, he suggests monitoring users and limiting their access to applications within the company they might not need, training them consistently on cybersecurity and monitoring vendors.In the meantime, he says experts are learning new information about the Canvas cybersecurity attack every minute.“Canvas has a long road ahead of them. Not only from a reputational damage perspective, but also unravelling how significant of attack this truly is,” Jones said.
