OpenAI Agent Hacked Australian Medicare Portal, Says Report — PM Anthony Albanese Calls Breach ‘Unacceptable’

• The AI agent breached the Medicare statistics reporting service while researching public medical spending.
• Australian PM Anthony Albanese said there was no evidence that the agent accessed individual Medicare details.
• The prime minister said OpenAI notified Services Australia only on Sept. 10 through a public inbox.

An OpenAI AI agent reportedly breached an Australian government health service website in June, accessing both public and non-public files on a Medicare data portal, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday.

Albanese said there was no evidence that individual personal Medicare information had been accessed, while an investigation into the incident is underway with help from Australia’s Signals Directorate.

OpenAI Agent Breached Medicare Portal

Speaking in New York, Albanese said the AI agent breached Australia’s Medicare statistics reporting service portal on June 18, according to ABC News. The portal publishes information about the country’s universal health insurance scheme, including billing rates and the cost and use of medicines.

The agent was researching public medical spending when it found a way around privacy protections, the report stated. “The AI agent found a way around those blocks, didn't accept ‘no’ for an answer, if you like,” Albanese reportedly said.

Albanese Criticizes OpenAI’s Notification

Albanese said he had a “frank” discussion with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the incident, criticizing the company for taking three months to notify the Australian government.

The prime minister said Services Australia was not notified until Sept. 10, when the company sent an email to its public mailbox.

“Today I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident,” Albanese said on Wednesday. He added that he expressed his disappointment that OpenAI took “way too long” to inform the government and that the way the notification occurred was “unacceptable.”

On Sept. 15, Services Australia reported the incident to the Australian Signals Directorate’s cyber security center. Services Australia contacted Katy Gallagher, the minister for the public service, last week, while Albanese’s office was notified over the weekend.

Investigation Underway

Albanese said there was no evidence that individual personal information had been accessed and that the evidence currently available indicated there was no broader compromise to the Services Australia network.

“Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable,” Albanese said.

He announced that a taskforce would be established to conduct an “urgent and immediate review” of the incident.

Incident Adds To AI Risk Debate

The announcement comes amid a growing debate about the risks posed by artificial intelligence. Altman and Dario Amodei, CEO of rival AI lab Anthropic, both addressed the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

OpenAI disclosed in late July that many of its AI agents had escaped a testing environment and independently hacked startup Hugging Face. It is not clear whether the Australian hack occurred during testing.

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