Canvas slowly comes back online at California campuses after nationwide outage
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- Canvas was restored online after a nationwide outage caused by a data breach.
- The company said names, email IDs and messages were taken in the data breach.
- Several California colleges kept Canvas restricted while security validations continued.
Canvas — a learning management platform used by thousands of universities and colleges across the country — was back online Friday morning after a data breach caused a nationwide outage. Used as a digital hub to share course materials, submit and grade assignments and communicate class updates, the Canvas outage caused major academic disruptions across campuses only weeks before finals.
While the company confirmed the system’s availability early Friday, access remained restricted for several students and staff in California at least until the afternoon as the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems conducted their own security assessments.
“Now that Instructure has advised that the incident has been contained and remediated, UC is making risk-based decisions about when to restore access to Canvas at campuses based on their operational needs,” the University of California said in an update Friday afternoon. “We understand the disruption this incident has caused for students, faculty, and staff. We will continue to monitor the situation and share additional information as it becomes available.”
As of 4:30 p.m., the system remained down for UC campuses including Berkeley and Davis.
Meanwhile, the CSU system enabled access to Canvas Friday afternoon. By 2 p.m., the system was back online at Sacramento State. In a message to students and staff, Sacramento State encouraged users to continue to exercise caution and report any suspicious activity.
Around the same time, the platform began coming back online across the California Community Colleges system. In an official statement, the Chancellor’s Office said colleges were taking a “careful, phased approach to restoring access to help ensure systems and user information remain secure for our students and faculty.”
The Los Rios Community College District’s access was up and running Friday afternoon. In an internal email, the district asked its community to be wary of any Canvas messages soliciting money and recommended avoiding links in messages from unfamiliar users.
“This has been a very challenging and confusing couple of days, and it’s important that we all extend grace to one another as we navigate next steps,” Deputy Chancellor Jamey Nye wrote in the email.
On Thursday, Canvas suddenly went down for students in the Sacramento area and across the nation, taking with it access to course materials, assignments and grades.
Instructure, the developer, said it took the system offline after it identified “unauthorized activity” by a hacker who made changes to the pages that appeared when students and teachers logged in to the system. This activity, it said, was tied to a data breach that occurred April 29.
Based on its investigation so far, the company said data including names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages were taken in the April 29 incident. There was no evidence, it said, that passwords, Social Security numbers, financial information or other highly sensitive data had been compromised.
“We’ve notified law enforcement, including the FBI, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and international law enforcement partners,” the company wrote on its website.
Brian Watkins, spokesperson for Instructure, said the hacker had exploited an issue related to the company’s Free-For-Teacher accounts. These accounts allow independent educators to create their own courses without an institutional affiliation. Now, Instructure has temporarily shut down that feature.
“This gives us the confidence to restore access to Canvas, which is now fully back online and available for use. We regret the inconvenience and concern this may have caused,” Watkins said Friday morning.
A group called ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for the outage and warned affected schools to “negotiate a settlement” with the group by May 12 to prevent the release of their data.
At schools, many of which are just weeks away from finals, the incident caused major confusion and disturbance among faculty, staff and students.
“It’s challenging when things like this happen,” said Joanne Tippin, nutrition instructor at Shasta College in Redding. “Students are trying to get their assignments in on time right now. But everyone’s been really good about telling us what’s going on. And we’re trying to do the same for our students.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Canvas slowly comes back online at California campuses after nationwide outage."
