Yale ITS and the Poorvu Center are aware of a number of ongoing issues and investigations with Instructure, the company that makes and provides Canvas. Please see below for updates on the status of the different issues.
Ongoing Instructure Security Incident Investigation & Service Disruptions
Ongoing Cybersecurity Incident (5/1)
Yale ITS and the Poorvu Center are aware of reports of a cybersecurity incident at Instructure, the vendor that supplies the Canvas Learning Management System to Yale and many other institutions. ITS is closely monitoring the situation and will provide updates as appropriate.
Please visit Instructure’s status page for vendor updates on this and other issues: https://status.instructure.com/
For questions about this incident, please contact canvas@yale.edu.
Update (5/7/2026 @ 10:30am)
Yale has been notified of a security incident involving Instructure, the vender that provides the University’s Canvas learning management system. The incident involves unauthorized access to user data in Canvas, potentially including names, email addresses, and Canvas messaging. At this time, there is no evidence that the information has been shared publicly.
The incident was not targeting Yale but is impacting all Canvas users worldwide. Instructure’s investigations are ongoing and you can find their most recent information at https://status.instructure.com
Yale’s Canvas environments, including Canvas @ Yale and Yale Online, are operating normally. You may continue to access Canvas for course work.
Yale will continue to monitor the incident and work with Instructure to obtain further details on the impact to Yale users.
RESOLVED: Turnitin Report Generation Issue (5/2)
We have discovered that the Turnitin integration in our Canvas @ Yale instance is failing to generate similarity reports on submitted assignments. We have identified that submissions are still getting collected in Canvas, but the similarity report is failing to process.
Instructors who are using Canvas Assignments with Turnitin enabled can use the “Resubmit to Turnitin” option in Canvas once this issue is resolved to process any submissions that were made during this service interruption.
We have reached out to Turnitin to investigate and resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience this disruption causes. Please check back here for any updates.
Update (5/5/2026 @ 8:20pm)
The Turnitin integration has been restored and similarity reports are now generating as expected. Submissions made to Canvas Assignments with Turnitin enabled while this issue was occurring should have their similarity reports generated automatically now, but Instructors can also click the “Resubmit to Turnitin” option in Canvas to process any submissions that do not have their similarity reports generated still.
RESOLVED: Respondus Lockdown Browser Service Disruption (5/1)
We recently became aware of a service disruption to the Respondus LockDown Browser tool due to an issue with Canvas. This service disruption is preventing students from launching the LockDown Browser tool to take an exam, as well as preventing instructors from accessing the LockdDown Browser tool in Canvas to edit the tool’s configurations with Canvas quiz items.
Update (5/1/2026 @ 12:32pm)
Our testing shows that the Respondus LockDown Browser tool for instructors to configure new and existing LockDown Browser usage is now working. Thank you for your patience as we worked to resolve this issue.