Columbia, Stanford report online outages amid cyber incident

NEW YORK - Universities across the U.S. reported widespread outages on Thursday after a cybersecurity incident affected the Canvas online learning platform used by colleges nationwide.

The disruption involved software from Salt Lake City-based Instructure, which operates Canvas and builds technology for online learning and corporate training.

Universities including Stanford, Columbia and Princeton were among the schools that reported outages tied to the incident or warned students to remain alert for suspicious messages. The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported Thursday that students had also lost access to the Canvas platform.

Instructure Chief Information Security Officer Steve Proud reported a cybersecurity incident involving a "criminal threat actor" on its website on May 1.

Stanford said it was affected by the "nationwide cybersecurity incident" and cited information from Instructure saying the breach involved certain identifying information, including names, email addresses, student ID numbers and messages among users.

Rutgers University said in a statement on its website that it was unclear what school data may have been compromised. Baylor University urged students to beware of phishing messages that may aim to steal their information from attackers impersonating the school's IT staff.

A Duke security spokesperson confirmed the incident and told the student body that they are "closely monitoring the incident," according to the school's student publication.

A prolific cybercrime group, ShinyHunters, said it was responsible for the cyber incident in a dark web post seen by Bloomberg News. Instructure hasn't confirmed that ShinyHunters was behind an attack. The group frequently steals victims' data, then demands an extortion fee.

Hackers frequently target the U.S. education sector. Attackers struck a number of Ivy League universities last year, stealing sensitive data and students' personal information in breaches at Dartmouth College, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

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(With assistance from Janet Lorin and Liam Knox.)

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 9:06 PM.