Who is the ShinyHunters hacker group, and why did they target Instructure's Canvas?

ShinyHunters is a notorious cybercriminal extortion ring, generally described as a loose network of young adults operating out of the US and UK. They have a history of massive data heists, including a recent breach involving Ticketmaster. They targeted Canvas simply because educational platforms are absolute goldmines of sensitive, digitized data. By breaching Instructure, they claim to have stolen roughly 275 million user records across 9,000 schools. Their motive is purely financial—they are holding this massive trove of student IDs, emails, and private messages hostage, demanding a hefty ransom payment by May 12 to prevent a leak.