Canvas, an online learning management system, was hacked by the group Shiny Hunters on May 7, shutting down many college classes, including those taken by MECA students at Mt. SAC. Students at many campuses across the country who use the LMS were shut out, causing assignments and tests to be inaccessible.

MECA students found that their Canvas accounts were impacted on Thursday night, the week before finals. This caused much uncertainty, anxiety and confusion among students. As they were going to check their college classes’ home page, they were met with a maintenance page. 

Senior Autumn Pagan found that if students had one of their classes bookmarked, clicking on it would lead them to a login page, but it is not advised to enter their information into it.

Upon advice from the Chancellor’s office, if students logged in to their Canvas account during the hack (anytime yesterday), they should change their password.

Mt. SAC went further and stated, “In addition, we strongly recommend that all Mt. SAC students reset their passwords as a precautionary measure.”

While Instructure, the educational technology company that owns Canvas, claims that “Canvas is fully back online and available for use,” students are finding that they cannot log in to their Canvas account, mainly on the computer. When students try to log in, they get the message “Please verify your username or password and try again.”

According to Nathan Slaymaker, principal, students should be receiving an email in the next few days with information on how to contact their professors.

Some professors have already sent their students emails about the situation; Senior Joshua Fermalino, who takes the special admit course STATS C1000, received such an email.

“But even if Canvas is not working by then, WE WILL STILL HAVE CLASS,” STATS C1000 professor Cameron Troxell said in an email. “If you tried logging into this ‘page’ earlier today, please contact the Help Desk at 909-274-4357 to reset your password.”

A ParentSquare message from Slaymaker sent to students and families stated, “We are working to obtain additional information and will share relevant updates as they become available.

Canvas was first hacked on April 29, but Instructure chose to perform “security patches” according to ShinyHunters, rather than pay the hacking group. 

On the other hand, Instructure claims that when they found the unauthorized access, they “immediately revoked the unauthorized party’s access, started an investigation, and engaged outside forensic experts.”

ShinyHunters also have stated that if the money is not paid by May 12th, they will make the personal information of students public.

The message read, “ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again). Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some ‘security patches.’”

On Instructure’s website, they state that only student names, emails, and student ID numbers were found, but no passwords, addresses, government IDs, or financial information were leaked.

ShinyHunters also gave their own advice on how to handle the potential data leak.

“Please consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact us privately at TOX to negotiate a settlement,” their message continued. “You have till the end of the day by 12 May 2026 before everything is leaked. Instructure still has until EOD 12 May 2026 to contact us.”

ShinyHunters is a hacking group that made its name in 2020. The group has stolen around 200+ million records from many companies.

As of now, the only thing students can do is to leave Canvas alone and change their Mt. SAC portal password. Students are advised to avoid entering personal information and not to click on suspicious links.