What we know about an AI agent’s breach of Medicare
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed this morning that an AI agent breached the government’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal. Here’s what we know so far.
- An OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the public-facing portal, which is administered by Services Australia. No personal data was breached, and the government has assured Australians the information accessed by the agent was completely separate from any personal Medicare data.
- The breach occurred on June 18, and OpenAI became aware of it in August. Government ministers were not informed about the incident until the end of last week, and Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman did not inform him of the breach when the pair met earlier this month.
- The government was only informed after OpenAI emailed a public Services Australia address on September 10.
- Albanese said he had spoken to Altman about the incident. “I also expressed my disappointment that 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,” he told a New York press conference.
- The government has mobilised a taskforce to investigate the hack, and Marles said OpenAI was working “cooperatively” with it to determine how it occurred.
- Minister for Government Services Katy Gallagher was informed about the breach on September 17, six days after Services Australia discovered the alert in the public email inbox and two days after the Australian Signals Directorate was informed.
Ukraine sent two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea: Zelensky
Ukraine has sent two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN General Assembly, following months of consultations between Kyiv and Seoul after the soldiers were captured in Russia’s Kursk region in 2025.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry did not directly confirm Zelensky’s comments but said it had been consulting with Kyiv and other relevant parties to resolve the matter in a manner that respected the soldiers’ free will and complied with international law and humanitarian principles.
The ministry said in a statement that it would not confirm details about the soldiers’ “disposition, the timing or route of their transfer or specific contents of consultations” with Ukraine, calling it a sensitive matter concerning the safety of the soldiers and their families.
The soldiers were among thousands of North Korean troops sent to support Russia’s war on Ukraine.
AP
Government fined after nine-year-old girl burnt at Questacon exhibit
The federal government has been fined after a primary schoolchild endured second-degree burns at the nation’s largest science education centre.
The nine-year-old girl suffered burns to her hands and arms in July 2022 when she used alcohol-based hand sanitiser and touched a plasma globe exhibit at Questacon, a government-run centre in Canberra known to attract school excursions and young families.
Her hands, fingers and wrists were covered by the burns, and her forearm had blisters.
The government was fined $140,000 today as a result.
Xi, Trump seek safe AI without slowing race for supremacy
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump will sit down this week to hash out a plethora of thorny issues from trade to Taiwan.
But one thing both sides agree on: neither can afford to tap the brakes on AI.
While Silicon Valley debates the possibility of artificial intelligence wiping out humanity, Washington and Beijing appear more worried about global technological supremacy.
The two countries have signalled no intention to slow down AI development – a debate that has flared anew in Australia after today’s news of an OpenAI model breaking into Medicare.
Albanese sets terms of reference for AI breach taskforce
The federal government has released the terms of reference for its rapid review into the OpenAI breach of Medicare announced this morning.
The review will be led by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet alongside the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian AI Safety Institute.
It will cover the incident, cyber vulnerabilities in the system, reporting obligations and Commonwealth governance for future incidents.
NSW Greens demand immediate audit of government systems, databases
The NSW Greens are demanding an immediate audit of all government systems and databases in the wake of the Open AI breach, and assurances that similar unauthorised attacks have not occurred.
Abigail Boyd, the party’s spokesperson for industry, condemned Open AI’s delay in reporting the breach as “frankly outrageous”, saying the government could not rely on big tech companies for “even the most minimal of social obligations”.
“We need an urgent, forensic, and wide-ranging digital audit of all NSW Government systems to make sure similar breaches have not occurred,” she said in a statement released today.
Boyd blasted the Sam Altman-led Open AI as an “arrogant company”, noting its failure to appear in front of a NSW parliamentary inquiry and its failure to notify government.
“The NSW government is extremely vulnerable to these attacks from malicious artificial intelligence products,” she said.
What we know about an AI agent’s breach of Medicare
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed this morning that an AI agent breached the government’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal. Here’s what we know so far.
- An OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the public-facing portal, which is administered by Services Australia. No personal data was breached, and the government has assured Australians the information accessed by the agent was completely separate from any personal Medicare data.
- The breach occurred on June 18, and OpenAI became aware of it in August. Government ministers were not informed about the incident until the end of last week, and Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman did not inform him of the breach when the pair met earlier this month.
- The government was only informed after OpenAI emailed a public Services Australia address on September 10.
- Albanese said he had spoken to Altman about the incident. “I also expressed my disappointment that 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,” he told a New York press conference.
- The government has mobilised a taskforce to investigate the hack, and Marles said OpenAI was working “cooperatively” with it to determine how it occurred.
- Minister for Government Services Katy Gallagher was informed about the breach on September 17, six days after Services Australia discovered the alert in the public email inbox and two days after the Australian Signals Directorate was informed.
OpenAI’s ‘deep disrespect’ prompts calls for sovereign AI, global guardrails
The government’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence companies, despite “deep disrespect” shown by OpenAI’s delayed disclosure that one of its agents targeted government databases, shows the need for stronger safeguards and sovereign capability, senator David Shoebridge says.
“Australia should be looking at sovereign AI capability to defend and protect ourselves. We’ve seen zero investment in that from this government,” the Greens senator said in Sydney this morning.
He called on the government to call in the US ambassador David Brat to explain what the Trump administration knew, when, and why it did not reach out to Australia.
Australia needs to join with middle power nations like Canada, Singapore and South Korea to push global guardrails amid a technological arms race between the US and China, Shoebridge said.
Minns says breach a big concern for NSW government
Premier Chris Minns has labelled the breach of a NSW agency by an artificial intelligence agent a “big concern”, calling for society to heed calls to slow down the technology.
Minns said Anthony Albanese personally called him last night to report the breach of a Medicare site and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research by the OpenAI agent in June.
“The AI agent was told not to access these parts of the website – this information – and did so anyway,” Minns told reporters at Sutherland Hospital this morning.
“Now, that’s a big concern for us in NSW. We will need to examine its impact, both the technology and the vulnerabilities in our confidential information or information that is not public facing.”
More AI needed to prevent breaches, says One Nation chief of staff
One Nation chief of staff Chris Taylor has questioned whether more regulation was the answer to artificial intelligence hacks.
“It looks like government’s not very prepared for this type of cyberattack and the new risks that exist, particularly with these type of frontier models,” he told News24.
“What we should be asking is what is the best way for us to be prepared against these type of cyberattacks. I mean, AI is a tool… it’s going to be an arms race, effectively, of whether or not you have the AI tools and access to the AI tools to defend against these type of AI attacks.”
Taylor also questioned the delay in announcing the hack.
“The timing is pretty peculiar, right around the time the prime minister is standing up on a global stage to talk about the perils of AI,” he said. “And yet when, from what I understand, there’s no personal information that’s been released as part of this data breach,” he said.
Unemployment rises to a five-year high
Australia’s unemployment rate has climbed to its highest level since the disruptions of the COVID pandemic.
The national unemployment rate hit 4.6 per cent in August, the worst result in almost five years.
However, the uptick in the jobless rate is unlikely to stop the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates at its monetary policy board meeting next week.
Earlier this week RBA governor Michele Bullock said an unemployment rate “between 4.5 and 5” per cent would probably be needed to ease inflationary pressures.
Almost 40,000 jobs were added in August but a rise in the rate of workforce participation meant the unemployment rate also increased.
Victoria had the highest unemployment among the states last month at 5.2 per cent, while NSW had the lowest rate of 4.3 per cent.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
