{"id":211030,"date":"2026-05-08T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/canvas-system-is-online-after-a-cyberattack-disrupted-thousands-of-schools-wral-com\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T18:00:10","slug":"canvas-system-is-online-after-a-cyberattack-disrupted-thousands-of-schools-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/08\/canvas-system-is-online-after-a-cyberattack-disrupted-thousands-of-schools-wral-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Canvas system is online after a cyberattack disrupted thousands of schools :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canvas system is online after a cyberattack disrupted thousands of schools :: WRAL.com<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/ap\/446c2-canvas-system-is-online-after-a-cyberattack-disrupted-thousands-of-schools\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-08 13:52:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.wral.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTens of thousands of students studying for final exams around the world Friday regained access to a key online learning system after a cyberattack knocked it offline, throwing schools and universities into chaos. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA hacking group called ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, said Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, said in an update late Thursday that the system was available for most users.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCanvas is used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, lecture videos and more. The hacking group posted online that nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed, Connolly said. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tScreenshots Connolly provided showed that the group had been threatening to leak the trove of data. By Friday, Instructure and Canvas had been removed from a dedicated leak site created by the ransomware group on the dark web to publish stolen data, he said. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCanvas went down Thursday at the worst possible time, which came as no surprise to Huseyin Can Yuceel, the security research lead at Picus Labs.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cTiming is everything, because they want to inflict pain as much as possible,\u201d he said, \u201cso they can extort money out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRich in digitized data, the nation\u2019s schools are prime targets for far-flung criminal hackers, who are assiduously locating and scooping up sensitive files that not long ago were committed to paper in locked cabinets. Past attacks have hit Minneapolis Public Schools and the Los Angeles Unified School District.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tInstructure has not posted about the attack on its social media. The company didn\u2019t immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press asking whether it paid a ransom and inquiring about what happened with the compromised data.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStudents quickly took to social media, with many panicking that they could no longer view course materials housed within the platform to study for their final exams. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTeachers said they were having to find workarounds to help students study for exams and submit final assignments. And some schools, such as the University of Texas at San Antonio, announced they were pushing back finals scheduled for Friday in response to the outage.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSchools like Princeton University turned to the social platform X late Thursday to announce that Canvas appeared to be working and information technology staff was monitoring the situation. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRhongho Jang, a computer science professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, was finalizing grades for a class of 94 students when the system went down. He keeps paper copies of the student exams, but all of the semester assignments were done online. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThat\u2019s 50% weight for the final grading,\u201d Jang said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIf those assignments and grades could not be recovered, Jang would have given his students full credit.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cI didn\u2019t want to penalize them,\u201d he said. \u201cWe cannot judge based on the data we don\u2019t have. The final responsibility is still on the server.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlthough he was sure the data was saved and would be recovered, Jang was relieved when Canvas came back up.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAllan Liska, of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said the outage did appear deliberate, not a glitch, and that Instructure was trying to figure out how widespread the problem was and make sure the hackers were no longer inside its system.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cThere\u2019s no indication at this point that any ransom has been paid,\u201d Liska said. \u201cAnd it likely is still a little too early for a ransom to have been paid. You know, normally these negotiations kind of drag on for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLiska said nothing big has been leaked yet, but said that is common. \u201cOnce they\u2019ve leaked, they\u2019ve lost their leverage.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConnolly said the Canvas attack is strikingly similar to a breach at PowerSchool, which also offers learning management tools. In that case, a Massachusetts college student was charged. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConnolly described ShinyHunters as a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The group also has been tied to other attacks, including Live Nation\u2019s Ticketmaster subsidiary.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShinyHunters, or an offshoot, also was behind a previous smaller breach of Instructure, Liska said. He added that the group or someone pretending to be ShinyHunters issued a statement Friday indicating that it had nothing to say.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIt\u2019s very weird,\u201d Liska said, noting that the group is \u201cnormally a very talkative bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t___<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThis story has been updated to correct the name of the cybersecurity company to Emsisoft, not Emisoft.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t___<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Associated Press\u2019 education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/p>\n

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