A Canvas cyberattack disrupted online instruction for thousands of schools and educational institutions during a peak exam period, forcing universities to pause coursework and adjust deadlines. The breach affected nearly 9,000 institutions worldwide, including parts of the University of Illinois system. Campus IT teams assessed the impact while some programs moved to improvised alternatives and deadline extensions. The incident is a direct warning about how deeply higher education relies on a small number of centralized digital vendors that can function as critical infrastructure during academic downtime.