Australia Says an OpenAI Agent Hacked Into a Government Health Site

One of OpenAI’s agents went rogue and hacked an Australian health data website. It’s the first hack of a government system — that we know of. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday that OpenAI’s agent tried to access a portal of Medicare statistics in June. It tried to bypass restrictions to gain access to restricted information. Specifically, he said it’s “a research project that has got into areas that it shouldn’t have.” 

It’s the latest in a series of revelations that started over the summer when news broke that unreleased OpenAI models in an evaluation environment hacked the AI platform Hugging Face in an attempt to cheat on the evaluation. In the two months since that disclosure in July, several similar incidents involving agents from OpenAI and other AI companies have come to light.

How did an OpenAI agent hack Australia?

Albanese said the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal is a public-facing statistics portal that doesn’t have sensitive personal health information, but the government is still investigating to understand what government systems were affected and get more information. A task force has been created to review the hack and consider any law enforcement and legislative action. As of now, there’s no compromise to the Services Australia network or personal information, Albanese said.