Your Homework Was Hacked--Canvas Breach Gives Students an Excuse to Avoid Studying
By: Jim Stickley and Tina Davis
June 7, 2026
Are you one of those people who was always wishing you could study and do homework all the time? You just wanted your friends to go out and have loads of fun without you so you could be extra studious on a Friday night? No? Me neither. However, if you were a university student during May, the notorious cybercrime group Shiny Hunters gave you a great reason to go out and ditch the homework. They hacked the third-party company’s system that provides the online portal for students at those organizations to do their school work.
That company is Instructure, the maker of the massively popular Canvas learning management system. According to reports, the hackers claimed to have stolen data connected to nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of students, teachers, and staff.
Some school login pages were even temporarily defaced with ransom demands from the attackers and some messages between users may also have been accessed.
The good news is that Instructure says there is currently no evidence passwords, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or financial information were compromised.
Still, that does not mean students and faculty should relax like they just finished finals early.
If you use or have used Canvas through your school system, now is the time to:
- Change your Canvas password and any account using the same password.
- Enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
- Watch for phishing emails pretending to be from your school, professors, or IT department. These could go on for a long time.
- Be cautious of fake “grade update” or “account verification” messages.
- Monitor school accounts for suspicious activity or unfamiliar messages.
- Avoid clicking links in unsolicited emails, even if they appear school-related.
These tips don’t apply merely for those in a university system. They’re good study points for everyone when it comes to being online and keeping your information secure.
This incident is also a stark reminder about how backing up important data is crucial. Those schools with current backups may well be able to just load one of those up and get going again to avoid major disruption. It’s recommended to never pay a ransom in situations like this. That only encourages more of the same behavior.
Hackers love education systems because schools are giant treasure chests filled with personal data, stressed-out users, and busy people likely to click before thinking. Finals week simply added gasoline to the chaos bonfire.
For now, students may have gotten a temporary break from homework. Unfortunately, they may also have homework-sized cybersecurity problems to deal with afterward.
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