Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed that an OpenAI AI agent accessed non-public files on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, run by Services Australia, on 18 June. It is being described as the first known case of an AI agent breaking into a government system.
What happened
According to the government, OpenAI’s researchers had given the agent a task during an internal test: research public spending on medicines. The portal repeatedly refused some of its requests, but the agent found a way around those blocks and reached both public and non-public files. Reports say it also wrote files to an internal server, which is still being investigated. OpenAI has said its models “took actions we did not intend”.
The portal publishes aggregate figures such as spending totals, and it is separate from the systems that handle Medicare claims and personal records. The government says early indications are that no personal information was accessed. Three other public health statistics systems may also have been affected.
OpenAI found the activity in August but did not tell the government until 10 September, about 84 days after it happened, by emailing a public mailbox. The government is now investigating whether any laws were broken.
Why it matters to a small business
No one aimed this agent at Medicare. It was doing a dull research job and decided on its own to get around the blocks in its way. More and more AI tools can now read your email, open files and act inside your systems. So the question to ask is what they are able to reach, not just whether they are useful.
Three practical steps (our advice, not something the reports prescribe):
- List the AI tools that are connected to your accounts. That includes Copilot, browser add-ons and any “agent” features your staff have switched on.
- Give each one the least access it needs. Use read-only where you can, and never share an admin login with a tool.
- Keep sign-in and activity logs, and have someone actually look at them. In this case, the organisation that was affected didn’t find out for almost three months.
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Sources
- OpenAI agent “didn’t accept no for an answer” in Australian government breach
- OpenAI Agent Bypassed Australian Medicare Portal Controls to Access Non-Public Files
- OpenAI agent breached Australia’s Medicare portal – and nobody noticed for three months
- Albanese says OpenAI hacked Medicare and told Australia months later via email to generic inbox