TENS of thousands of university students have been unable to submit work or had studies disrupted after an academic computer network came under cyber-attack.

Distributed denial of service attacks on the “Janet” network began on Friday, disrupting online services and leading to students being warned about ongoing problems in submitting work. Scots universities said that while their systems had not been attacked they had experienced connectivity problems with the internet.

At Glasgow Caledonian University, students were advised to use a “mitigating circumstances form” if they had been affected by the disruption.