First-year bioengineering student Cadence Esterling routinely used worksheets on Bruin Learn to study for her lower-division calculus class – which she has a midterm for Wednesday.

But when a cyberattack shut Canvas down Thursday, it barred Esterling from accessing the material needed to study for the test.

“It’s rough,” Esterling said. “I’ve been talking to my friends about getting old practice tests. I’ve been harassing people for their resources.”

ShinyHunters, a criminal extortion group, led a cyberattack against Canvas, which students across the country use to access their grades, assignments and course materials. Bruin Learn – which is hosted on Canvas – was inaccessible as of Saturday afternoon, which some students said made it difficult to study for exams and complete assignments.

ShinyHunters claimed on the Canvas website Thursday afternoon that it stole the universities’ data, and threatened to release it if Instructure – Canvas’s parent company – did not contact them by May 12.

[Related: Cyberattack shuts down Bruin Learn, targets thousands of schools]

Esterling said she found ShinyHunters’ message on Canvas to be disturbing. However, she added that she is interested in seeing how UCLA responds to the cyberattack given that the university is bound to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act – a federal law that protects the privacy of student records.

“It just felt really eerie that they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re holding all your data hostage until the school makes a deal with us,’” Esterling said.

UCLA Media Relations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the university’s guidance for professors or accommodations for students.

Mimi Jebory, a third-year human biology and society student, said she learned about the shutdown while in class Thursday. Students started talking about ShinyHunters’ message on Canvas mid-lecture, Jebory added.

While Jebory was not able to access her organic chemistry assignment, which was due over the weekend, she said she is not worried about UCLA’s ability to handle the shutdown.

“It was kind of funny, just because of the way they (ShinyHunters) were writing,” Jebory said. “I’m not really scared because I know UCLA, we can handle this stuff pretty well.”

Nathan Rifkin, a second-year psychology student, said he was planning to spend the weekend writing three six-page essays, but can no longer access the prompts on Bruin Learn because of the website disturbance.

Rifkin added that he is not worried about his academic information being released, but is concerned about personal identifying information being leaked.

Max Chaplin, a first-year music industry student, said the shutdown has lightened his workload, giving him more time to play and record music. He added that his professors were accommodating about the disruption, allowing him to submit his homework through email.

“It didn’t really make a huge difference to me – I was still able to do my work,” he said.

Esterling said she hopes that UCLA communicates more about the Canvas cyberattack going forward.

“They were just like, ‘Oh, Canvas is shut down, and we know about it’ – they didn’t actually communicate to us what was happening,” she said. “If I wasn’t online, or had friends who were in touch, I probably wouldn’t know that there was a whole hacking thing going on.”

Contributing reports by Sophia Pu, Daily Bruin contributor.