A cyber attack has hit several universities and schools in the US, Canada and Australia, causing widespread disruption and confusion during the busy end-of-year exam season.

The cyber hacking group ShinyHunters has already claimed responsibility for the attack, which was targeted at the academic software Canvas, which is used by thousands of schools and universities and went offline this week.

An estimated 9,000 educational institutions were impacted across the globe and though Instructure, the company which owns Canvas, reported that the software was "available for most users", some universities were still reporting outages.

Users reported a ransom note suddenly appeared on screen, threatening to release stolen data unless Canvas or the affected schools paid a ransom in bitcoin.

The University of Sydney told students on Friday that "Canvas was unavailable", instructing students not to attempt to log in.

They wrote on their website: 'We are one of approximately 9000 institutions around the world that are impacted by this outage, and we are still waiting for advice from Instructure.'

The university also acknowledged 'how disruptive this is at a critical time in the semester', with the outages coming during peak coursework and exam season.

ShinyHunters has been linked to several high‑profile cyber attacks in the past, including a large-scale, economically-damaging hack on Jaguar Land Rover last year. The group would not say what it plans to do with the data it claims to have taken during the latest attack.

Luke Connolly, a threat analyst from cyber security firm Emisoft, told the Associated Press that the threats began last Sunday (3rd May), with deadlines given for Thursday 7th and Tuesday 12th May. He also said discussions regarding extortion payments could still be ongoing.

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