It's funny, I was at the Coursework Studies Committee (part of my duties as Academic Senator) on Monday, and right at the very end, one of the academic members brought up the fact that students could access their marks early. As a matter of procedure, marks cannot be made available till the Academic Senate votes to approve them. Hence them supposed to being released at 2pm. Seems there were quite a few annoyed academics, as they'd been receiving emails from students Friday morning from about 2am onwards with students appealing grades they hadn't even officially received.
Turns out it was a once-off glitch because they were playing around with menu options. The "official release" was supposed to be so secure, and then a bit of bad code ended up releasing the info anyway.
I had to chuckle...