Students and faculty were greeted by a “breached” message when attempting to access Canvas Thursday, May 7. The attack has affected over 9,000 universities and schools.

The message from the criminal extortion group “ShinyHunters” claimed they breached Instructure, the company who operates Canvas, and instead of Instructure contacting the group, they did “security patches.” The group claimed they will negotiate with the platform until May 12, before “everything is leaked.”

As of 3:59 p.m. May 7, Alamo Colleges District offices sent an email stating Canvas is temporarily offline while they work with Instructure to address the “ongoing cybersecurity incident.”

Alamo Colleges has not officially stated whether students’ personal information will be leaked and how this will affect finals week. The Sundial reached out to Alamo Colleges District offices, Alamo Colleges Information Technology Services, and San Antonio College President Dr. Francisco Solis for comment but has not heard back.

Alamo Colleges District offices sent an email at 5:19 p.m. stating, “Students who are affected by the outage will not be held responsible for completing assignments or exams that are due while Canvas is unavailable. Instructors are directed to exercise discretion in managing due dates, deadlines, and any related academic expectations for those impacted.”

Editor’s note: This article was updated with information from an Alamo Colleges District email update. 

This story is ongoing and will be updated as we get more information.