Instructure Canvas LMS suffers massive data theft affecting 275M users
Education technology company Instructure confirmed a breach of its Canvas learning management system. ShinyHunters claimed responsibility, stealing personal information, student IDs, enrolled courses, and billions of private messages from nearly 9,000 schools and 275 million individuals worldwide. The company patched a vulnerability, rotated keys, and is cooperating with law enforcement.
- names
- email addresses
- student ID numbers
- course enrollments
- private messages
What happened
On May 3, 2026, education technology provider Instructure confirmed that its Canvas learning management system had been breached. The incident involved the theft of personal information belonging to approximately 275 million users across nearly 9,000 schools and institutions worldwide. The threat actor known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack and stated that it had accessed names, email addresses, student ID numbers, course enrollment records, and billions of private messages exchanged within the platform.
Instructure disclosed that the attackers exploited a vulnerability in the system. The company responded by patching the vulnerability, rotating cryptographic keys, and initiating cooperation with law enforcement agencies. While the precise method of initial access has not been publicly detailed beyond the patching action, the scale of the exfiltrated data indicates the intruder maintained prolonged or high-privileged access to core databases containing student and institutional records.
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