ShinyHunters Goes After Cybersecurity Firm Warning Victims Not to Pay Ransoms
ShinyHunters Goes After Cybersecurity Firm Warning Victims Not to Pay Ransoms
Publish Date: 2026-05-19 10:42:00
Source Domain: www.pcmag.com
A cybersecurity company says the hacking gang ShinyHunters has tried to censor and cut off its communications after it urged the public to refuse to pay the group’s ransom demands.
“They want you to forget past behavior that caused victims to stop taking them seriously,” warned Allison Nixon, chief research officer for cybersecurity vendor Unit 221B. “They are also flooding our email to make it more difficult for journalists to reach us.”
Nixon posted the message on LinkedIn after ShinyHunters reached a new level of infamy earlier this month for hacking Canvas, an online educational system used by thousands of universities and schools in the US. The hackers posted an extortion note on Canvas claiming they had stolen data from tens of millions of students at nearly 9,000 schools and educational institutions.
In response, Canvas developer Instructure made the controversial decision to pay the extortion demand under an “agreement” that the stolen data be deleted. However, the payment is a major win for ShinyHunters and is expected to fuel the group’s hacking efforts.
Nixon is urging victims of ShinyHunters to think twice before surrendering to the group’s demands. “They don’t have a convincing argument about why you should pay in the first place,” she told PCMag in an interview. “Their only answer to you is that they will hurt you. But that’s not a rational answer.”
(Credit: ShinyHunters)
Nixon initially flagged the risks of paying ShinyHunters in February while speaking with cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs. “ShinyHunters rely on the intensity of their emotional manipulation to force you to make a snap decision, within 72 hours, to pay the ransom to stop the harassment,” Unit 221B added in a blog post warning that the gang uses violent threats to get what they want, along with bombarding victims with email and text messages.
Since then, Nixon’s company has been flooded with emails for random…
