An OpenAI agent has accessed “public and non-public files” from a “Medicare statistics reporting portal”, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Speaking at the United Nations meeting in New York, Albanese said the AI agent had “infiltrated” and “gained unauthorised access” to the data portal in June.
While the portal is “public-facing”, according to Albanese, it appears not all of the data files that holds are for general consumption.
“The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files,” Albanese said in comments broadcast by ABC News and other outlets.
“The Medicare statistics reporting portal is a public-facing statistics portal that contains non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics such as spending.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage but investigations are ongoing.”
It wasn’t immediately apparent which portal was breached and whether or not it is still online.
A Services Australia spokesperson has been contacted by iTnews for additional comment and clarification.
Albanese said that a forensic investigation, aided by the Australian Signals Directorate, is now underway.
This is focused not just on the immediate incident with the Medicare data portal, but also on ascertaining whether “other government systems were affected.”
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles told ABC News that the government was made aware of the Medicare data incident “a couple of weeks ago”.
“Ministers were informed at the end of last week and over the weekend, and over the last few days we’ve been assuring ourselves of exactly what the impact has been in relation to data and the portal itself, and for what that’s worth it’s relatively minor,” he said.
“No personal information has been accessed here, there’s no impact on the system.
“But that said, what we have seen is unauthorised access into an Australian government website and that’s completely unacceptable and we’ve made that clear to OpenAI.”
Marles also indicated a multi-agency taskforce has been assembled.
“At our end, what we’ve done in response to this is to establish a taskforce that will be led by Prime Minister and Cabinet’s department, which will also work with the ASD and the AI Safety Institute to just examine everything that has occurred here, and to understand what the AI agent and how this incursion occurred and what the impact of it has been,” he said.
“We will continue to do that work.
“We are working cooperatively with OpenAI in relation to that.”
