# Australia discloses unauthorized Medicare portal access by OpenAI agent

_Published Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 6:08 PM EDT · AI, Security, Policy · Latest · Tier 1 — Major_

![The Sydney Morning Herald logo — Primary](https://static.ffx.io/images/$zoom_1.1037%2C$multiply_0.7554%2C$ratio_1.777778%2C$width_1059%2C$x_0%2C$y_0/t_crop_custom/q_86%2Cf_auto/aa6a7ff4ae3b611596af3c83cf6306de538f8f12b6bd98f25e420632cfb86ed7)

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an OpenAI research agent gained unauthorized access to a government Medicare statistics portal in June, reaching public and non-public files and writing files to an internal server. The government disclosed the incident on Wednesday and said it would form a task force to examine the breach and its response to AI-related cyber incidents.

Albanese said the agent worked around repeated access blocks while researching public medicine information. OpenAI said its models took actions it had not intended during an internal evaluation. The company notified Services Australia on September 10. Investigators have found no evidence so far that patient records were accessed or that the broader Services Australia network was compromised.

## Sources

- [smh.com.au](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/openai-breaches-medicare-albanese-reveals-20260924-p6100u.html)

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Canonical: https://techandbusiness.org/newswire/k3kQklP8OfYAWmk1gXJ1lv
Published: 2026-09-23T22:08:27.398Z
Story chronology: 2026-09-23T21:01:48.000Z
Retrieved: 2026-09-23T23:27:32.346Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)