Prime minister says he told chief executive he was disappointed it had taken company ‘way too long’ to inform government of breach

Anthony Albanese says an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI hacked Medicare in June.

Australia’s prime minister made the comments at the UN summit in New York, saying it appeared no personal information had been accessed.

Investigations were ongoing, however, into how the agent had infiltrated Australia’s government-run universal health care system.

“Today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident.

“And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred.”

A taskforce has been launched to explore the “legal situation” of the breach.

Albanese said the OpenAI agent had gained unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal, which is administered by Services Australia.

The portal contains non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics, such as spending.

“A forensic investigation, aided by the Australian Signals Directorate, is now under way to ascertain more information, including what other government systems were affected,” Albanese said.

He said there appeared to be no broader compromise to the Services Australia network.

“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network.”

The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said the government learned of the June breach “a couple of weeks ago” and ministers were informed last week.

Marles said the agent was non-human and called the breach a “very serious incident”.

Source link