Canvas, Mercer's digital classroom and course manager, worked on Friday morning just a day after it displayed a "currently undergoing scheduled maintenance" message after its parent company, Instructure, suffered a ransomware attack by ShinyHunters, a cybercrime group.
Newsweek reported it found only school districts in Georgia were impacted by the outage and that no universities in the state had been hacked.
The group took responsibility for the data breach May 3 and it gave the universities, school districts and other entities involved until the end of the day May 12 to satisfy its demands before it said it will release the stolen data, according to a message the group inserted into Canvas pages that displays when users attempt to log in.
The group said the attack has stolen data from 275 million individuals at nearly 9,000 universities, according to Bleeping Computer.
"The information involved consists of certain identifying information of users at affected institutions, such as names, email addresses, and student ID numbers, as well as messages among users," Instructure said in a statement on May 2. "At this time, we have found no evidence that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved. If that changes, we will notify any impacted institutions."
Mercer and its IT department did not respond to requests for comment about Canvas' maintenance and whether it was linked to the ransomware attack, nor did it acknowledge the attack in an email to students. The University was attacked in an isolated incident in May 2023 that led to "unauthorized access to its computer network," according to reporting by The Cluster.
The attack comes during final exams at other universities, but Mercer students remained relatively unscathed by the issue. The final exam period at Mercer ended Saturday, May 2 and final grades were due Tuesday, May 5. Commencement will take place on Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.
Gabriel Kopp '26 is double majoring in Journalism and Law and Public Policy at Mercer University. He has written for The Cluster since he started at Mercer, and currently works as editor-in-chief. When he isn't completing a Washington Post crossword, he enjoys going for runs around Macon and reading The New York Times or the AJC while sipping coffee.
