On May 6, Canvas, a cloud-based learning system, was shut down worldwide after a hack by a cybercriminal group named Shinyhunters displayed a warning message claiming they would distribute student information if the owners of Canvas did not reach out to them by May 12.  

“I was not at school when the hack happened, so my substitute told me about it, and another teacher sent me a screenshot of the message the hackers sent,” statistics teacher Dana Stiles said. “Immediately, I felt stressed because I was worried I was gonna lose all of the data that I had in there, all my information in a blend, and I was concerned about what student information they were trying to get.”

According to the Instructure website, Canvas has over 30 million users and is used by around 9,000 educational institutions. Schools all around the nation reported having to push back assignments and finals.  

“I found out Canvas was being hacked when I saw a TikTok about it, because I hadn’t done any school work that day, and then I couldn’t access anything on my phone or on the website,” senior Sara Lenehan said. “A bunch of assignments I had to do on a Friday I couldn’t access, then my teachers didn’t postpone the due date, and I got stuck cramming everything, and it wasn’t even because of me, it was because of Canvas.”

Canvas was back online on May 8 and available for most users. In a statement given to CBS News, Instructure said the hackers had exploited an issue in the ‘Free-For-Teacher’ accounts. To resolve this, they decided to shut down all Free-For-Teacher accounts.