Zero technical details on what the "hack" actually was. Willing to bet it was something as stupid as the data being accessible by changing the query parameter, and rather than own up to their own shoddy security (no doubt built by an offshore contractor) they are going to blame the one who found and reported the bug.

Here's [the PM's press conference transcript](https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-new-york) that revealed this incident:

JOURNALIST: Could you just clarify, did our security agencies completely miss this breach? We only found out once the company actually told us the breach?

PRIME MINISTER: Well, to be very clear, the way that this occurred was not in a way that would likely – I mean, this is not a security website where there is – this is a Medicare statistics portal.

This seems rather revealing. A pity journalists didn't ask about what protections were bypassed on the data that was obtained.

> Their efforts to answer a question — including devising ways to access a federal government website blocking their access — was laid out on a German coding website OpenAI had previously confirmed was hijacked by its unreleased AI models in June.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-24/openai-agents-plotted...

I agree that security was probably awful but the agents did circumvent a block on their access. The definition of “hacking” is fuzzy but this is more nefarious than simple web crawling.

Does it matter whether the data was poorly secured? LLMs should not be hacking into government medical websites, and if they do, the companies responsible should disclose the incidents as soon as possible.

> no doubt built by an offshore contractor

More likely by a big 4 firm who collected fees exceeding AUD 100m

Eh, it's a bit of both.

If a service has a duty to keep your data secure, then failing that is bad. So yeah, the website should be better and I am as cynical as you are about it.

But working around controls to access other peoples data can lead to prison time for a human. This wasn't a white hat operation. Data was exfiltrated however great or small.

Here we have another instance of "But the AI did it! No one is responsible!".

Which gets tiring. LLM's are a great tool but in every other instance of tool use, using tools comes with responsibilities for their outcomes.

Even if the outcome should be: thanks for letting us know, we'll fix it.

Most government contractors are onshore, for Australia. SDP was only rolled out this year.

> Willing to bet it was something as stupid as the data being accessible by changing the query parameter,

Um... why? OpenAI agents have literally been caught coordinating with each other to effect successful multi-stage attacks on sites using novel zero-day vulnerabilities.

While, sure, it's possible this is just a goof on the part of the victim, that you would be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the LLM seems... weird.

[flagged]