A cyber attack disrupted the Canvas academic software platform operated by Instructure, taking the service offline for universities and schools across the United States, Canada and Australia. The hacking group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack, which affected an estimated 9,000 institutions worldwide.

Instructure posted on its website that Canvas was available for most users by late Thursday, though some universities continued to report outages on Friday. The University of Sydney told students through a website announcement that Canvas was unavailable and instructed them not to attempt to log in, saying it was one of approximately 9,000 institutions affected and was waiting for advice from Instructure. The university acknowledged that the outage affected students' coursework and examinations at a critical time in the semester.

Penn State University wrote in a message to students that no one had access to Canvas and that a resolution was unlikely within the next 24 hours. The university canceled some exams scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

The University of British Columbia in Vancouver informed students that Canvas was unavailable due to a cyber breach of its parent company Instructure and advised them to log out of the platform immediately. The University of Toronto reported it was impacted by the breach. Students at the University of California Los Angeles were unable to submit assignments through the Canvas platform.

The University of Chicago temporarily disabled its Canvas page after reports that it was targeted. The Chicago Maroon posted a screenshot of a message from ShinyHunters that appeared to be seeking a ransom, encouraging the university to contact the hacking group privately to negotiate a settlement and avoid the release of its data.

The targeted threats from ShinyHunters began on Sunday with deadlines on Thursday and 12 May, threat analyst Luke Connolly said. He said discussions regarding extortion payments could be ongoing.