Australia reports breach of health department website by OpenAI agent

Australia has reported the world's first instance of AI agent infiltrating government websites and gaining unauthorised access to files.

Investigations are still ongoing to ascertain more information, including what other government systems are affected.

The country's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he has voiced concern of the breach to OpenAI which is involved in the case, but is disappointed by its three-month delay in notifying the government.

On June 18, an OpenAI agent reportedly hacked into Australia's public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal administered by Services Australia, which hosts aggregate data about health spending and drug subsidies.

It took until September 10 before there was any notification to Canberra about the incident, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who makes the security breach public while attending the United Nations General Assembly.

"Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network, nontheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable," he says at a press briefing.

Albanese warns three other government websites might be affected by the OpenAI agent's activity, and complains the tech firm took way too long to disclose.

He makes the statement after holding a telephone conversation with its CEO Sam Altman, who is also in New York to address the diplomatic gathering. "Today, I'm announcing the establishment of a task force to provide an urgent and immediate review into this incident to determine whether existing processes are appropriate to respond to AI-related cyber incidents. And insights from this incident will inform the development of our government's AI standards legislation."

Albanese says: "AI is changing the world, 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."

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles assures the public that the impact of this event is relatively "minor," but the government is taking it very seriously. "This is a very serious incident, as the Prime Minister has made clear overnight. It is utterly unacceptable."

Authorities stress that the system itself "has not been in any way compromised."

OpenAI states their review finds the information accessed included "aggregate health statistics and internal file names" and there's no evidence of patient records being accessed.

The company confirms identifying activity involving multiple Australian government websites and services as the models attempted to look up answers in a way that they did not intend.