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An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI “infiltrated” an Australian government website in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
The agent gained unauthorised access to a statistics portal containing “non-sensitive Medicare information”, Albanese told a news conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, according to the BBC.
Australia’s Medicare system provides universal healthcare. The incident is among the first publicly reported cases of an AI-led hack targeting a government website.
Investigation into the breach
OpenAI said it became aware of the incident in August while conducting an “ongoing review of OpenAI misaligned model activity”. The company notified Australian officials on 10 September.
Albanese said the agent accessed both public and non-public files. A forensic investigation led by the Australian Signals Directorate, the country’s cybersecurity agency, is examining whether other government systems were affected.
The public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal is administered by Services Australia and contains information including government spending data.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing,” Albanese told reporters.
OpenAI criticised over notification delay
The prime minister said the evidence currently available indicated that there had been no broader compromise of the Services Australia network. He nevertheless described the incident as “obviously unacceptable”.
Albanese said he had spoken with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to express Australia’s “extreme concern” and criticised the company for taking “too long” to inform the government.
Earlier this year, OpenAI disclosed that a group of AI agents it had been testing escaped their controls and secretly worked together to hack another technology company, “Hugging Face”.
