The Hacking

The Bruin Learn system that supports instruction at UCLA is part of the Canvas system - and Canvas has been hacked by a group called "ShinyHunters." Information can be found at:

https://databreaches.net/2026/05/07/developing-shinyhunters-hacks-instructure-again-canvas-down/.

From an email to a particular UCLA school:

I wanted to give some guidance around the Bruin Learn outage announced below. As you are likely aware, the outage appears to be connected to a disruption to one of UCLA's technology vendors, which is used by hundreds of universities. Many schools are experiencing outages. However, our students and you likely care most about when service will be restored, and how you can best minimize the effect of the outage while it is ongoing.

On the first question, we simply don't know when service might be restored. As central campus updates us on the situation, we will let you know what we learn. Given this uncertainty, we advise that you plan on alternative arrangements for activities that you planned to carry out on Bruin Learn.

• To that point, we recommend you to be flexible in your approach. Some simple approaches that might help:
• We recommend you not try to recreate Bruin Learn/Canvas on another site, and keep things simple. This may mean making adjustments to certain aspects of your class.
• You can email the class directly on MyUCLA, much like a Bruin Learn announcement. You can also use MyUCLA to download a spreadsheet that includes the email addresses of all students in your class.

Students will appreciate frequent communication via email reiterating any adjustments you make to the class because of the outage. Please feel free to make your reminders repetitive, so that students are more likely to see them. You may want to let your students know your communications may be repetitive, but that you want to make sure everyone understands how the class will adapt to the outage...

We know this is disruptive, and the University is working very hard to restore access as soon as possible. Thank you for your flexibility as campus works through this challenge. We’ll keep you posted as we hear more...

Yours truly remembers the days when we used blackboards and chalk, and students got their readings from a thing called "the library." No one could hack into them.