Australia is run on legacy systems that AI agents can easily exploit, former UN cyber negotiator warns

Ageing computer systems used throughout Australia’s government and large sections of the economy are easily exploited by AI agents, increasing the risk that sensitive information could be compromised, Australia’s former chief UN cyber negotiator has warned.

As the government urgently undertakes a forensic investigation into a rogue OpenAI agent accessing Medicare data, the AI expert and Tech Policy Design Institute executive director, Johanna Weaver, said huge vulnerabilities existed across older IT systems.

“It is old legacy systems that present the huge vulnerabilities, because large amounts of information and data is stored on these systems that have been around since the beginning of the internet,” Weaver said.

“They aren’t updated and maintained because either people have forgotten about them or it’s too costly, or there aren’t updates for systems any more. That creates an enormous vulnerability, and that is what these agents are going to be exploiting.”

Monday’s meeting of federal cabinet will discuss the fall out, as OpenAI said on Sunday it had paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models amid growing reports of its agents going rogue.

After the Australian hack was revealed on Thursday, the company disclosed moves to review several incidents in which OpenAI agents searching American government websites went far beyond what handlers asked of them.