HACKERS attempted to bring down the university admissions website hours before anxious students began logging on to find out if they had secured their degree place. Ucas said there had been a "criminal and sustained attempt" to crash the website. But chief executive Mary Curnock Cook also insisted that the incident was quickly contained and no personal data had been released. It is understood that the hackers attempted to gain access early on Wednesday evening, and the site was offline for around an hour. Speaking from Ucas headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Ms Curnock Cook, said: "This year we have made a step-change in our technology arrangements and most of our critical services are deployed in the cloud, which gives us massive resilience. "Last night there was a criminal and sustained attempt to crash our website. The incident was contained very, very quickly and no personal data was released to anybody. "Really, we were pretty upset that anybody would think of disrupting such an important day for so many people who are getting their A-level results and finding out whether they are going to university."