Australia’s acting prime minister, Richard Marles, has confirmed that an OpenAI-related breach affected four government websites in June, including unauthorised access to the Medicare Statistics Portal and aggregated medical statistics.
Mr Marles and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher addressed the incident at a press conference, where he described the access to the Services Australia portal as a “very serious incident”.
“In relation to the Medicare Statistics Portal of Services Australia, the agent of the AI model, on first requesting the information and that information being denied, engaged in what’s described as ‘misaligned behaviour’, and engaged in unauthorised access of that portal in order to gain the information,” Mr Marles said.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health, and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research were also accessed.
However, the information captured from those three websites was publicly available data. Mr Marles said no individual medical data had been accessed and that the medical information involved was aggregated statistics only.
Terms of reference for a task force investigating the incident have now been made public.
