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A shadowy group that claims to have hacked a popular educational platform is reportedly trying to extort money from colleges and schools across the country, including in Georgia.

The group, which calls itself “ShinyHunters,” claims to have hacked the Canvas platform, a popular digital hub for submitting assignments, taking quizzes, checking grades and communicating with instructors.

The product was developed by Instructure, a global education technology company with a U.S. headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Instructure told users Thursday that it was investigating problems they were experiencing when they tried to log into their online portfolios. The company also said it had placed its platform in “maintenance mode,” although a recent update said the platform was available for “most” users.

The outage affected students at all levels, including at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where students were alerted by email Thursday of a “major cybersecurity breach” affecting Instructure.

The student newspapers at universities across the country reported on the hack.

The Daily Pennsylvanian at the University of Pennsylvania reported Thursday that ShinyHunters had claimed to have stolen emails and private messages, student names and ID numbers, and course enrollments. At Duke University, The Chronicle reported Thursday that the group was threatening to release the data if it wasn’t paid a ransom.

By Friday, Georgia Tech was telling students that Canvas access had been partially restored and that students should communicate directly with instructors about affected assignments and exams.

Thursday was the last day of classes at Tech, but some or many K-12 school systems use Canvas and are weeks away from summer break.

“We understand that there is a worldwide Canvas/Instructure outage impacting over 9,000 institutions,” a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Education said by email Friday. She said Instructure had not provided information yet about the full scope of the incident.

The state agency oversees, but does not directly operate, Georgia’s 180 school districts. However, it does directly operate a handful of specialty schools, including Georgia Virtual School.

“Out of an abundance of caution, GaDOE has implemented security protocols and directed Georgia Virtual School students and staff not to use the platform until further notice,” the spokeswoman wrote. “We continue to coordinate with the Georgia Technology Authority and the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency on this matter.”

The education agency encouraged school districts that contract with Instructure to monitor the company’s user information page. The spokeswoman said the education department would offer support as the situation evolves.

It is unclear how many school systems rely on Canvas as their main learning management system. The Fulton County School System in metro Atlanta does and announced Thursday that Canvas “is completely down and inoperable for students, parents, and teachers.”

Fulton said on a web page about the outage that Instructure said student passwords, Social Security Numbers, and financial information were not involved but that names, email addresses, school assignments, and internal Canvas messages might have been.

The district said it was collaborating with law enforcement and was trying to identify workarounds for the remainder of the school year.

The disruption could make it difficult to report grade point averages for college scholarships, even for schools that do not use Canvas.

That is because many districts have students who turn to the Georgia Virtual School for Advanced Placement classes that are unavailable locally. Without Canvas, the systems cannot access their official grades.

“They’re going to have trouble calculating salutatorians and valedictorians unless they find another way around that,” said John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. “They’ve got two weeks to get it resolved.”