Australia鈥檚 national health website has been hacked by an OpenAI agent. It was able to access non-public files and is the first publicly revealed case of an AI agent breaching the defences of a government portal.
Full details of the hack haven鈥檛 yet been revealed. But the essence of the incident, , who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, is that on 18 June, an artificial intelligence agent belonging to OpenAI infiltrated the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal. This includes aggregated statistics collated from individual medical services, such as from GP surgeries.
鈥溾�楾he AI agent accessed both public and non-public files,鈥� said Albanese on 23 September.
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OpenAI said in a statement that it learned about the security breach during a review of 鈥渕isaligned model activity鈥�. The firm says its agents had been trying to look up statistics about Australia and then 鈥渢ook actions we did not intend鈥�. It says it hasn鈥檛 found evidence of any patient data being accessed.
Though the company learned of the breach in August, it didn鈥檛 notify Australian authorities until 10 September, which it did by emailing a public government mailbox. It then took more than five days to reach the cybersecurity department.
鈥淚t 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,鈥� Albanese told reporters.
Albanese also revealed that he and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, had a conversation in which he expressed Australia鈥檚 鈥渆xtreme concern about this incident鈥�.
at Griffith University, Australia, says it isn鈥檛 the first time such a breach has occurred, even if it is the first government hack by an agent from a big AI firm to be made public, and it won鈥檛 be the last.
These agents don鈥檛 always stick to the rules, he says, as the Hugging Face incident earlier this year, where another OpenAI agent hacked into another AI company, demonstrates. 鈥淧eople throw up their hands in horror and say: 鈥極h no, it鈥檚 rogue AI.鈥� But it鈥檚 not, it鈥檚 really just AI doing what it was trained to do,鈥� he says.
Failure to bring agents to heel should have criminal consequences, just as it would if it was a person who led the cyberattack, says at the University of Sydney. 鈥淭he issue with private data is once it鈥檚 leaked, it鈥檚 not going to come back.鈥�
