Canvas owner reaches ‘agreement’ with hackers to secure stolen data

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Tech TechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Tech News NewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All News Security SecurityPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

FollowSee All SecurityCanvas owner reaches ‘agreement’ with hackers to secure stolen dataWhich probably means Instructure has paid the hacking group. Which probably means Instructure has paid the hacking group. by Jess Weatherbed Jess WeatherbedNews ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

FollowSee All by Jess WeatherbedMay 12, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC Image: The Verge Jess Weatherbed Jess WeatherbedPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Instructure, the company behind the Canvas learning management platform, says it has “reached an agreement” with hackers that breached its systems last week to prevent stolen data from being leaked online. The ShinyHunters hacking group claimed responsibility for the attack before Canvas was briefly taken offline. The group threatened to publish 3.

5 terabytes of student data if ransom demands for a “settlement” weren’t met. Now, Instructure says the stolen data has been returned as part of its unspecified “agreement” with the hackers, alongside a promise that “no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident. ”“We understand how unsettling situations like this can be, and protecting our community remains our top priority,” Instructure said in its latest statement.

Industry Implications

“With that responsibility in mind, Instructure reached an agreement with the unauthorized actor involved in this incident. ”RelatedNever pay the ransom — a cybersecurity CEO explains whyThe ransomware business is booming, even as enforcers shut down some major playersInstructure doesn’t explicitly say that it paid ShinyHunters, but this update certainly suggests as much. Ransom payments can go toward funding further ransomware attacks, and there’s no guarantee that the hacking group will uphold its side of the bargain.

Instructure said it had received proof that the stolen data had been destroyed (which begs the question of how that data was also “returned”), and that its agreement covers all customers impacted by the breach. “While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible. We continue to work with expert vendors to support our forensic analysis, further harden our environment, and conduct a comprehensive review of the data involved.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.