By: Kevin Modeszto | Publish Date: May 7th, 2026
Cybercrime has been a problem since the rise of the internet. During finals week for so many universities, including our Kean University, the latest target is Canvas. Canvas, owned by Infrastructure, is the most popular learning management system. The latest data shows that 41% of North American colleges and universities use this software for grades and coursework.
For 275 million college employees at 9,000 schools all around the world, an ominous message from cybercriminal group ShinyHunters popped up when trying to check Canvas.
“ShinyHunters has breached Infrastructure (again),” the message stated. “Instead of contacting us to resolve it, they ignored us and did some “security patches”.
On May 5, 2026, ShinyHunters threatened Infrastructure to pay them, or they would leak student data. Now, on May 7, it appears that leaking is the path these criminals will be going down. On the screen they showed, it stated that Infrastructure, or any of the involved universities, had until the end of the day on May 12 before the data stolen would be sold.
For Kean junior Dihanel Antonio, a final exam is on the line.
“Just as I was about to start (my last final), the website crashed,” Antonio said. “At first I thought it was a glitch, but the more I refreshed the page I realized it wasn’t.”
“It’s cutting into my time that I have left to submit my assignments…. imagine people who are taking finals where they only have one chance,” Antonio continued.
As of 5:00 p.m., Canvas shows an outage for “scheduled maintence” on computer and an error when trying to log in on mobile. Students and teachers at Kean University are unable to access the software during a crucial time in the semester.
This is not ShinyHunters’ first time attacking educational software, just last month they took credit for a data breech at textbook publisher McGraw Hill.
Student data being sold would lead to a major violation of FERPA, or Family Educational Rights and Privacy. Right now, an eight-figure class-action lawsuit is being contested against Naviance (a website used for applying to college) for similar violations. If data is sold, Infrastructure likely would face a similar lawsuit.
At 5:12 p.m., an Email was sent to the Kean community about Canvas’ outage. Nothing of the hacking or data leaks was stated.
“Dear Kean Community,
We have received reports that Instructure Canvas is currently experiencing issues. When attempting to login, many users are encountering a “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance” message.
Canvas Support is aware of the issue and actively investigating. We will continue to update the University community on the progress of the service outage.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during this time.”
“I have two long discussion posts and some other assignments due,” freshman at Boston’s Northeatern University Jiya Patel said, “and I can’t finish them now so I’m hoping it doesn’t negatively impact my grade.”
The Tower will provide further information as this story continues to develop.
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