The University of Toronto is one of thousands of schools and universities affected by a cyberattack on Thursday that caused chaos for students cramming for finals and questioned the dependence on technology in education.
Hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach at Canvas, a web-based learning management system that’s used to manage grades, course notes, assignments, and lecture videos, to name a few. In an online post, ShinyHunters stated that close to 9,000 schools across the world were affected, with billions of private messages and other records accessed.
“The parent company of Canvas (known at U of T as Quercus) is managing a cybersecurity incident. Multiple universities are affected,” said the University of Toronto in an update on its website . U of T’s learning management services are unavailable until further notice.
Students panicked on social media
On social media, many students asked if others were unable to access Canvas, with many panicking that they could no longer view course materials to study for their final exams.
Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emisoft, told The Associated Press that ShinyHunters began threatening on Sunday to leak the trove of data, giving deadlines of Thursday and May 12. He said the later date indicates that discussions regarding extortion payments may be ongoing.
Schools are rich in digital data, which makes them prime targets for hackers, who are locating and scooping up sensitive files that were once printed on paper and locked in cabinets.
Instructure, the company behind Canvas, hasn’t posted about the cyberattack on social media.
Connolly told the AP that the Canvas attack is similar to a breach at PowerSchool , which also offers learning management tools.
Who is ShinyHunters?
ShinyHunters is a hacking group consisting of teenagers and young adults in the United States and United Kingdom, Connolly said. The hacking group has been linked to other attacks, including one aimed at Ticketmaster.
Schools in the U.S. began notifying parents and students alike after the cyberattack.
Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a post on X that his students had been relying on Canvas to access every reading from the semester and all of his lecture slides before their Monday final exams. The outage leaves students and faculty “dead in the water here in academia right now,” he said.
Linker said in a Friday post that “Canvas is back at Penn.”
As of a few minutes ago, Canvas is back at Penn. Academia has been revived/no longer dead in the water.
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) May 8, 2026
“Academia has been revived/no longer dead in the water,” he wrote.
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.
— With files from The Associated Press
