Friday, May 8, 2026

PCC, PUSD Struck by Nationwide Schools Cyberattack

An investigation was underway Friday after a cyberattack disrupted access to a key education computer platform used by Pasadena Unified, Pasadena City College, the California State University campuses, UCLA, and thousands of schools nationwide.

The attack, allegedly carried out by a hacking group called Shiny Hunters, targeted Instructure, developer of the Canvas education platform used at universities and school systems nationwide. The attack apparently began more than a week ago, but it led to outages of the Canvas system on Thursday.

A person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to Pasadena Now that Pasadena Unified was affected by the Canvas outage and that teachers could not access student records.

Pasadena City College issued three messages to students, faculty, and staff on Thursday over its RAVE Alert system — reserved exclusively for emergencies — warning them not to click on any links, download files, or respond to messages related to a pop-up message that appeared on the PCC Canvas. The pop-up was reportedly a message from Shiny Hunters.

An alert posted by the UCLA Chief Information Security Officers acknowledged the outage and said “our vendor is working toward a resolution.” Other University of California campuses were also being impacted.

The Long Beach-based California State University system stated online that Canvas was down at all of its campuses, and the Chancellor’s Office.

“Instructure is working diligently to gather more information and get systems restored,” according to the CSU website. “This situation is fluid, and we are working with Instructure to determine the full scope of impact and will provide updates as soon as they are available.”

The hack came as many students were using the Canvas system to take final exams. Some users reported that a message appeared on their computer screens from Shiny Hunters, which claimed to have captured the data of hundreds of millions of users which would be released if affected institutions did not arrange a “settlement” with the hacking group.

Instructure officials stated on the company’s website that it was investigating and working to resolve the issue.