United States
USA
Instructure Canvas incident forces maintenance mode and outage, disrupting classes and exams
Instructure disclosed a security incident impacting its Canvas LMS, placing services into maintenance mode and taking Canvas offline during the investigation. Reuters and other outlets reported ShinyHunters’ extortion claims and exposure of names, emails, student IDs and messages. The outage and service issues caused widespread classroom disruption during finals before access was largely restored by May 7–8.
70
Estimated severity
70 / 100
93
Source reliability
93 / 100
Approximate Date
29/04/2026
Targeted Company
INSTRUCTURE
Targeted Company Supply Chain Impact
Distribution & Fulfillment
Procurement & Sourcing
Production & Manufacturing
Sales (Retail & Ecommerce)
Warehousing
Service Delivery
Unrecognized Impact
Supply Chain Relations
No information
Geographic Impact
Country Targeted Company
Other Affected Countries
Canada
CAN
Target country
United States
Affected countries
United StatesCanada
Impacted regions
No information
Operational Impact
Duration
No information
Financial impact (USD M)
No information
Impact types
Service unavailabilityService degradationDownstream customer disruptionOperational disruption
Affected sectors
Technology & IT ServicesEducation & Research
Affected departments
No information
Attack Profile
Attack types
Unauthorized accessData exfiltrationExtortion
Attributed threat actors
SHINYHUNTERS
Sources
Incident Sources
status.instructure.comhttps://status.instructure.com/incidents/9wm4knj2r64zreuters.comhttps://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/schools-reach-out-hackers-canvas-breach-hits-us-classrooms-source-says-2026-05-08usatoday.comhttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2026/05/08/canvas-hack-learning-platform-schools-colleges/89988920007k12dive.comhttps://www.k12dive.com/news/a-2nd-canvas-data-breach-causes-major-disruptions-for-schools-colleges/819755abc7news.comhttps://abc7news.com/post/canvas-system-back-online-cyberattack-disrupted-thousands-schools/19065668newsroom.ocde.ushttps://newsroom.ocde.us/schools-worldwide-respond-to-canvas-security-breach-and-service-disruptions