ALBANESE SAYS OPENAI AI AGENT HACKED MEDICARE PORTAL

Anthony Albanese has said an OpenAI artificial intelligence agent accessed public and non-public data on Australia's Medicare portal, run by Services Australia, while researching health statistics in June. Speaking in New York, the prime minister said OpenAI did not tell the government until 10 September, three months later. Deputy prime minister Richard Marles said the agent approached three other Australian websites in an authorised way, but when refused by the Medicare portal, "it effectively hacked into that medical portal and got that information anyway". He called the unauthorised access "very serious", though the impact was "relatively minor". OpenAI said it was investigating and had found no evidence that patient records were accessed.

The Australian Signals Directorate is helping investigate how the agent accessed Medicare's statistics portal and three other bodies: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. OpenAI's notification was an email to a public mailbox, checked once daily, not read until 11 September. Services Australia then reported the matter to the Australian Cyber Security Centre on 15 September. Albanese said he had told OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman he was disappointed it had taken the company "way too long" to disclose the breach.

A taskforce has been launched to examine the legal situation arising from the breach. New South Wales premier Chris Minns and Victorian premier Ben Carroll said Albanese had told them it also affected their states' websites, the NSW crime statistics bureau and Victoria's health department. Both said it did not appear personal information had been shared, while investigations continued. Minns said New South Wales would work with Commonwealth intelligence agencies "to get to the bottom of it".