Finals Fret: Canvas Shut Down During College Students’ Most Stressful Week
During the mid afternoon on an average Thursday, Canvas shut down for millions of students across the nation.
On May 7, 2026, Canvas, a popular online classroom resource, unexpectedly shut down in the midst of finals week. Unfortunately, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian writer Luke Petersen the website was hacked by ShinyHunters, an infamous cyberattacking group. Additionally, according to Tech Inside writer Elias Virtanen, they gained access to student and teacher information including names, email addresses, ID numbers and messages from at least 9,000 schools.
Then, they threatened to release the data by the end of the day on May 12, 2026, if Canvas did not comply to their wishes in the following statement below:
However, as noted by BBC cyber correspondent Joe Tidy, Canvas made a deal with the hackers. So, no user data was sold and everything has been deleted. The website is back up and running now.
How did the breech happen? Well, Virtanen states that the hackers targeted Free-For-Teacher (FFT) accounts, accounts dedicated for independent teachers, because they have “low friction.” Since these accounts do not have to be verified by “an institution's IT department,” they do not have to go through the same security measures, thus giving the hackers easier access to the platform.
Now that the academic crisis is over, it is still a good idea to review your account to make sure nothing has been compromised. Ensure that 2-factor authentication is enabled to make sure that you are notified of all activity on your account. You can also set up passkeys to increase protection on your account by having another way to control activity on it.
Praise God that the security breach has been resolved and students were able to return to their regular schedules!
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