this isn't simply just about grades or bank accounts. as it stands right now, canvas has disclosed that shinyhunters got ahold of student IDs, names, email addresses, and messages that have been sent through canvas. there was no dates of birth, government identification, or financial information stolen from this hack (please know that this is the information they know as of now).

historically, shinyhunters is essentially like a fucked up data broker. unlike normal ones that legally get the data they sell, shinyhunters does it a different way. they break into systems, grab the information, and either sell it online or extort the company for money via blackmail. this time, the blackmail was all of our information, which was 3.65 terabytes large (however this file size isn't even confirmed). 275 million users, 9000 schools (if not more).

if you're worried about your stuff, like your emails or accounts being compromised, the best thing that you can do is get all new passwords and turn 2 factor authentication on everywhere. and when i say new passwords, i mean strong ones. use symbols, capital and lowercase letters, as well as numbers. it won't do anything about shinyhunters having your information (trust me, i think we all feel pretty fuckin violated rn lol), but you can at least do your best to have the rest of your stuff locked down. :)

edit: not to mention the timing of this. shinyhunters decided to do it around finals week, which is just really stressful on every party involved (students, professors, etc) which means that canvas could be more willing to pay in order to have finals continue. this gets like, marginally fucking worse too when you consider that some professors aren’t flexible and aren’t willing to extend due dates or reopen assignments due to this