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OpenAI Agent Bypassed Australian Medicare Portal Controls to Access Non-Public Files

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OpenAI Agent Bypassed Australian Medicare Portal Controls to Access Non-Public Files

An AI agent on an internal OpenAI research task bypassed access controls on an Australian government Medicare statistics portal in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

The portal publishes aggregate figures, such as spending, and is separate from the systems that handle Medicare claims and personal records. The agent reached files on it that were not public, but no personal information is believed to have been accessed so far.

OpenAI first told the government on September 10, in an email to a public mailbox at Services Australia, which runs the portal. OpenAI says it found the activity in August. Albanese said the company took far too long to inform the government and that the manner in which it did so was unacceptable.

On June 18, the portal repeatedly refused the agent's data requests, but the agent found a workaround and gained unauthorized access. The government has not said how the agent got past them.

Services Australia has told the government that the agent also wrote files to an internal server. That is still being investigated. The evidence so far shows no wider compromise of the agency's network.

The non-public data was not particularly sensitive and has since been published. By September 24, the portal had been taken offline, and its data moved to data.gov.au and other secure platforms.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles told the ABC that national security information is subject to much stronger protections, while the portal's information was "kept behind a fence that the AI agent effectively climbed over."


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