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Topic:Cyber Security
The prime minister has had a "frank" discussion with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman after an AI agent breached an Australian government website.
The company did not notify Services Australia of the incident until three months after the fact, via email.
The prime minister has announced a taskforce to investigate further.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed an AI agent hacked into an Australian Medicare data portal earlier this year.
Speaking in New York, Mr Albanese said the OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the Medicare statistics reporting service portal administered by Services Australia on June 18.
The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files, but Mr Albanese said it did not appear anyone's personal Medicare details were accessed.
Mr Albanese said he had a "frank" discussion with OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman, saying the company took three months to notify the government of the breach and, when it did, the notification was in an email sent to the Services Australia public inbox.
"Today I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident," he said.
"And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred."
He said the "nature" of the notification was also "unacceptable".
"The notification was an email sent just to the public mailbox," Mr Albanese said.
OpenAI accessed non-public aggregate health statistics and internal files from an old Australian government website that carried Medicare statistics.
It is understood an AI crawler, which is an automated program that scans websites and collects information from them, was able to find a security workaround to access the data.
Often deployed as a tool by AI agents, crawlers collect data that usually trains AI models, builds datasets or retrieves information for AI systems.
June 18: A Medicare statistics reporting service portal, administered by Services Australia, is breached by an OpenAI agent
August 11: OpenAI becomes aware of the breach during a review of OpenAI misaligned model activity during training
September 1: OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman meets Defence Minister Richard Marles in San Francisco, but Mr Marles says the breach wasn't disclosed
September 10: OpenAI sends an email to publicdisclosures@ servicesaustralia.gov.au — an address used by academics and researchers to notify weaknesses in Services Australia's systems
September 11: Services Australia sees the email
September 15: Services Australia notifies the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)
September 17: Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher is told and seeks further information
September 19-20: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his office are informed of the incident, while Minister Gallagher holds several discussions with Mr Marles, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, Services Australia and the ASD
September 22: First "technical exchange" between OpenAI and Services Australia
September 24: Mr Albanese calls Mr Altman and informs the public of the breach
The prime minister said OpenAI was conducting research into public medical spending when it found a way to break through privacy protections.
"The AI agent found a way around those blocks, didn't accept 'no' for an answer, if you like," Mr Albanese said.
The prime minister said Services Australia was not notified until September 10.
On September 15, Services Australia reported it to the Australian Signals Directorate's cybersecurity centre.
Last week, Services Australia got in touch with Katy Gallagher, the minister for the public service. Mr Albanese's office was notified over the weekend.
Katy Gallagher was contacted by Services Australia last week. (ABC News: Callum Flinn)
He said there was no evidence any individual personal information had been accessed, but an investigation aided by the Australian Signals Directorate was now underway.
"[The] evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network. Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable," Mr Albanese said.
The prime minister said three other websites may have been affected: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health.
But Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles later clarified that the interactions on those three websites were "entirely normal" and public information was accessed.
Mr Albanese announced a taskforce would be set up to provide an "urgent and immediate review" of the incident.
The investigation will be led by the prime minister's department and will work with the Australian Signals Directorate and the AI Safety Institute.
The prime minister was asked if Mr Altman apologised.
"Yes, he clearly … we can get into word games, but he clearly accepted that the company had not done good enough," Mr Albanese said.
In a statement, an OpenAI spokesperson said the company was "conducting an extensive review of misaligned model activity" during training, and notifying third parties when there was a potential impact on their systems.
"During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation," they said.
"In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.
The company said the information accessed included aggregate health statistics and internal file names.
"We notified the organisations and are providing technical information to support their investigations and help address potential security vulnerabilities," the statement said.
They said OpenAI's overall review was ongoing and it remained "committed to transparency".
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Topic:AI
Back in Australia, Mr Marles said the fact a non-human AI agent gained unauthorised access represented "a very serious incident", but the impact on the system was minor.
"For what that's worth, that's relatively minor, and so it's important to assure people of that. No personal information has been accessed here. There's no impact on the system."
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the hack was a "serious warning". He accused the prime minister of "failing to pre-empt" the incident and called on him to focus more on cyber defence.
"I would have thought that cyber defence is the number one issue when it comes to AI," Mr Taylor said.
Angus Taylor says Anthony Albanese should focus more on cyber defence. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
"It's not the only issue, but it's got to be top of the list, and it hasn't been the focus of the government … It should be, it must be."
Acting Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi said the incident was "disturbing" and called for a moratorium on AI data centres in Australia until further regulations were in place.
"This breach by a foreign AI company on an Australian government database is deeply alarming and brings home the risks that these out-of-control tech corporations pose," she said.
Mr Albanese said the incident was complex and unprecedented.
"It was a shock that it occurred because it was real and serious," he said.
"But it also, I think, was something that had been predicted, including by the AI companies themselves."
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