A cyberattack is to blame for technical issues that prompted the cancellation of last week’s Ontario-wide online literacy test, the Education Quality and Accountability Office confirmed.

Thousands of students were set to participate in the new online Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test on Oct. 20 but were unable to complete the assessment due to technical problems.

In a news release issued Monday, the EQAO – which is responsible for standardized testing in the province – said the issues were caused by a “malicious and sustained Distributed Denial of Service attack.”

“An extremely large volume of traffic from a vast set of IP addresses around the globe was targeted at the network hosting the assessment application. The impact of this DDoS, initiated by an unknown entity or entities, was to block legitimate users’ (i.e., school boards’, schools’ and students’) access to the EQAO test application,” the EQAO’s news release read.

“An in-depth and ongoing investigation will lead to recommendations on how to prevent similar incidents in the future.”

The EQAO added that no personal or private student information was compromised while the test was being administered.

In a written statement, Richard Jones, the EQAO’s director of assessment, said, “EQAO shares the frustration that students, parents, teachers, schools and school board educators and administrators feel about the outcome of the assessment. We were shocked to learn that someone would deliberately interfere with the administration of the online OSSLT.”

He added that staff will be discussing how to strengthen the system in the coming weeks.

“We will continue to work with Ontario’s education community to understand how best to use online assessments to benefit our province’s students,” he concluded.

Despite the cyberattack, the EQAO says it remains confident that assessments can be done online successfully.

Speaking to CP24 Monday, Jones said they have reported the attack to law enforcement.

"We will be providing them with a report and we will see where that process takes us," he said.

The motive for the cyberattack is not clear.

"There is no way of knowing at this point," Jones added.

This month's online test was a trial run for the system and if students had been able to complete it, there would be no penalty for students who failed the test.

The mandatory literacy test will be held in March.