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AI agent hacks government website for first time: why this breach matters
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Rachel Fieldhouse is a reporter for Nature in Sydney, Australia.
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OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman spoke at the United Nations Security Council meeting on AI in New York this week.Credit: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty
The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed on 23 September that an artificial-intelligence agent created by technology giant OpenAI hacked into a government health-care website in June, where it accessed private data.
Researchers say this is the first instance of a frontier AI model breaching another country’s government systems. Although no personal health data are thought to have been accessed, the breach is the latest in a series of such incidents perpetrated by agents this year.
OpenAI says the hack occurred during agent training and that it is in the process of notifying third parties of potential impacts on their systems.
News of the security breach comes as global leaders, including Albanese, meet in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly. China’s President Xi Jinping also met with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday for a three-day summit, at which the leaders are expected to discuss AI safety. But analysts say it is unlikely that any deals will be struck.
The latest attack is not surprising and more reports of agents doing things that they shouldn’t are likely to surface, says Jonathan Kummerfeld, who studies AI and human–computer interaction at the University of Sydney in Australia. AI companies run many experiments at the same time and “they probably aren’t seeing everything these models are doing”, he adds.
In a press conference in New York City, Albanese told the media that an experimental OpenAI agent with access to the Internet was carrying out research on Australian health and medical spending when the agent reportedly gained unauthorized access to the Medicare statistics reporting service. This is a public website that aggregates data on vaccinations, government spending on medical consultations and medicines, as well as organ donor register information.