Education (K-12)

The ShinyHunters ransomware/extortion group compromised and defaced Canvas LMS login portals used by hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide.

Attackers displayed ransom messages directly on login pages, claiming they stole data tied to approximately 8,800 institutions and up to 280 million records. The breach reportedly exposed student and faculty names, email addresses, IDs, and private messages.

The incident caused widespread outages and login disruptions during final exam periods.

New cyber intelligence pinpoints the education industry as the most targeted industry globally this year, with more than 4,000 weekly attacks per organization (yes, you read that right).

This figure represents a sustained 24% year-over-year increase in weekly attacks (~3,500 weekly attacks in 2024).

Because educational institutions often lack the resources for robust security counter-measures, adversaries have made them the target of attack, viewing them as "target rich, cyber poor" (as coined by CISA's K-12 Cybersecurity Initiative).