OpenAI agent hacks Australian healthcare database

Sept. 24, 2026, 1:46 p.m. ET

An OpenAI agent hacked into an Australian national healthcare database in the first known case of AI hacking a government network, according to Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese. 

“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network,” Albanese said in a statement on Sept. 24. “Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable.”

Services ​​Australia is a government agency for social and health payments.

The rogue agent acquired health data from the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, part of the Services Australia network, in June, which was before a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked AI start-up Hugging Face in July, the prime minister said. 

He added that Australian authorities do not believe the hack impacted individual’s health records.

OpenAI became aware of the activity in August during a review of misaligned model activity, according to the company. They notified Services Australia of the hack on Sept. 10. OpenAI told USA TODAY that, during that time, they were validating and investigating what information had been accessed.

“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,” Albanese said. He and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met on Sept. 24 to discuss the incident.