UPDATE: An email was sent at 8:15 p.m. on May 8, informing students that Canvas access has been restored. If you have any issues with Canvas, you can reach out to Palomar Help Center.
UPDATE: Canvas is back online but access remains restricted for Palomar students and many others in California as schools have remaining security concerns, according to the Los Angeles Times. Palomar has not posted an update on the issue since 3:57 p.m. on May 7.
UPDATE: Palomar’s alert system sent an email and text to students regarding this incident, encouraging students to remain logged out of Canvas and to close any tabs opened to the website. They did not disclose information on when the site will be available to students.
Faculty has also been notified via email on how to contact students in their classes outside of canvas. If students have questions they can reach out to professors directly at their Palomar emails which can be found on My.Palomar.edu in the enrolled class information.
UPDATE: Palomar sent out an email at 4:19 p.m. regarding the cybersecurity attack. They recommend staying alert for any suspicious emails or messages that seem to be about Canvas, verification, or password resets. Palomar will provide any further updates as soon as they are available.
SAN MARCOS — Palomar College’s Canvas access is down after the parent company was hacked by the hacking group Shiney Hunters.
At around 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 7th, Palomar’s Canvas website displayed the message with demands to Canva’s parent company, Instructure, and affected schools regarding breached data. By 1:50 p.m., the Canvas website switched to show the message, “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance,” and Palomar.edu added a banner to the top of the page about the outage.
Over 9,000 universities and community colleges, from as close as San Diego State University to as far as Columbia University in New York City, have all been affected by this breach.
The group responsible for the data breach calls itself “SHINY HUNTERS.” They are currently threatening Palomar, along with all the Canvas clients, to leak data if they are not offered a settlement. They have given an ultimatum deadline of May 12 before everything is leaked.
This kind of threat isn’t anything new for Shiny Hunters.
“ShinyHunters is a black-hat criminal hacker and extortion group that is believed to have formed in 2019, and is said to have been involved in a significant amount of data breaches,” according to Wikipedia.
Some of their prior Data Breaches have included Microsoft in 2020 and AT&T Wireless in 2021 and 2024. In 2025, they targeted Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany and Co, and many other luxury brands.
Each one of these data breaches conducted by the Shiny Hunters has demanded a settlement. As of now, it is unclear if anyone affected has met their request for a settlement.
Palomar’s official Instagram account posted a statement regarding this interruption.
“The college is aware of this situation and official updates will be shared as information becomes available, ” the post stated.
Additionally, an email has gone out to employees from Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Diane Studinka, about the cyber attack, but no emails have been sent out to students as of publication.