An artificial intelligence agent infiltrated a Medicare website in June, accessing public and non-public files and writing files to an internal server, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed.
Speaking to reporters in New York, Albanese said the incident involved an OpenAI agent gaining unauthorised access to the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, administered by Services Australia.
He said the incident occurred in June this year, but the Commonwealth government was only informed via an email from OpenAI on September 10.
“This situation is obviously unacceptable,” he said. “And today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident, and I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.”
Despite persistent questioning, Albanese would not reveal whether he discussed the breach in his conversation with President Donald Trump last night.“I do it privately ... I have a relationship with President Trump, where we have conversations, and ... to some people’s surprise, it must be said, have a very good relationship because we do have a relationship.”
Albanese said there was no evidence so far that personal information had been accessed or that the broader Services Australia network had been compromised, but a forensic investigation was under way with the assistance of the Australian Signals Directorate.
He said the government was also aware of three other systems that may be affected: the Commonwealth’s Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research; and the Victorian Department of Health.
Early evidence
Albanese spoke briefly to Victorian Premier Ben Carroll and NSW Premier Chris Minns last night.
He said the early evidence has found the agent accessed publicly available files, as well as material not intended for public access.
“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network. Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable,” he said.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing,” Albanese said.
He said the incident began on June 18 when an OpenAI research team used an internal model to conduct internet-based research into the public medicine space.
The AI agent encountered repeated blocks while seeking information from the government portal but found ways around them, ultimately gaining unauthorised access to other areas.
“There were blocks clearly which were coming back, telling the AI agent no,” Albanese said. “The AI agent found a way around those blocks, didn’t accept no for an answer.”
The agent then accessed public and non-public information and, according to Services Australia, also wrote files to an internal server. Albanese said OpenAI did not notify the government until September 10, almost three months after the incident, and did so by sending an email to a public mailbox.
Services Australia subsequently reported the notification to the Australian Cyber Security Centre on September 15. The agency informed Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher of the incident last week, with Albanese saying he was briefed over the weekend.
Task force
The government will establish a task force led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to urgently examine the incident and determine whether existing processes are adequate for responding to AI-related cyber incidents.
The task force will include the National Cyber Security Coordinator, the Office of AI, the Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian AI Safety Institute and Services Australia.
The review will examine possible law enforcement and legislative responses, while the incident will also be referred to Parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
Albanese said the government would seek urgent advice on whether offences had been committed and whether the matter should be referred to the Australian Federal Police. The incident will also feed into the government’s planned AI standards legislation.
OpenAI said its models had accessed “several Australian government websites and services” during an internal evaluation. The models were trying to look up answers and statistics for questions about Australia.
“In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.
The company said its review found no evidence that patient records had been accessed. It said the information accessed included aggregate health statistics and internal file names.
OpenAI said the activity took place in June, but it did not become aware of it until August. It found the activity during a review of what it calls “misaligned model activity” in its training and evaluation. It said it notified Services Australia on September 10.
“We notified the organisations and are providing technical information to support their investigations and help address potential security vulnerabilities,” the spokesperson said. “Our overall review is ongoing.”
OpenAI did not say which other government websites and services were affected.
Albanese used the disclosure to reinforce his argument for tighter safeguards around rapidly developing AI technology.
“AI is changing the world,” he said, pointing to its potential to deliver economic growth, productivity gains and advances in health, science and innovation.
“But AI also poses significant risks, and that’s why we need guardrails to protect our way of life.”
“We want to make sure that we shape AI rather than AI shaping us. Put simply, humans must remain in control.”
Albanese said the government understood the incident would be concerning to Australians but sought to reassure the public that no individuals were currently known to have been affected.
“At this point in time, there is no evidence that any individuals have been impacted,” he said.
Albanese said some details could remain confidential if they involved national security, but Australians had a right to know about the incident.
“I think it’s really important that people are aware that this has occurred,” he said.
News of the breach comes two days after Albanese urged other world leaders to unite on efforts to protect people from the risks of artificial intelligence, saying that no country can manage the technology’s growing risks alone.
Australia was among 22 signatories calling for new international safeguards on AI at the United Nations on Monday, amid warnings from scientists and industry executives that the rapid development of powerful systems could outpace governments’ ability to control emerging risks.
US President Donald Trump has rejected calls for slowdowns and restrictions on AI growth, warning that any self-imposed guardrails would give China a dangerous advantage.
Over the past two months, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have each said their models broke into real computer systems while being tested for hacking ability.
Alastair MacGibbon, Australia’s former cybersecurity tsar and co-founder of CyberCX said the agent had not been set up to hack anything.
Breach unnoticed
“This was an agent that was not tasked with hacking; it was tasked with medical research, and it just happened to use tools in its tool belt to go about achieving that objective, which involved basically hacking,” he said.
“They’re not doing it because they’re malicious. They’re doing it because they’ve been given a task. Imagine if you had a malicious human getting agents to do these tasks.”
MacGibbon said the bigger concern was that the breach went unnoticed. “The question we should be asking is the Australian government didn’t detect this in June,” he said.
He also criticised the government’s funding for AI oversight. He compared the AI Safety Institute’s budget to a couple of road black spot programs in Queensland over four years. He said he understood the Office of AI in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had “literally a handful of people”.
“I’ve been in this game for 25 years and we’ve been failing,” MacGibbon said. “Now that we have an Australian victim … It has to be taken seriously. The hubris has to end.”
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