Last week’s wide-ranging cyberattack that affected Twitter, Netflix and other major websites – also blew away Ontario’s first online literacy test – for tens of thousands of high school students.

The Education Quality and Accountability Office says the voluntary online test was targeted by an “extremely large volume of traffic from a vast set of IP addresses around the globe.”

And it says the impact of the Distributed Denial of Service attack carried out by “an unknown entity or entities” was intended to block legitimate users – such as school boards and students – from accessing the test.

Most of Ontario’s 900 secondary schools had signed up to participate in the test –  which was a technical trial run ahead of the first official test scheduled for next year.

The EQAO says an investigation is underway – and will lead to recommendations to prevent similar problems in the future.