OpenAI agent hack, Trump-Xi talks and Tigray
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Hi, I'm Kim Vanel in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Thursday, September 24th. Today. Australia says OpenAI agents breached one of its websites, the first time AI has taken aim at a government. Trump and G sit down for talks in Washington DC. And war erupts in Ethiopia's Tigra region. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week.
How did an OpenAI agent manage to breach Australia’s government health website?
Australia says an open AI agent breached a government health website and gained unauthorized access to files, in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking government sites. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says no personal information is believed to have been accessed, although investigations are ongoing. He also says he spoke directly to CEO Sam Altman to express his deep concern, revealing it wasn't the government who figured out something had gone wrong.
And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government uh what had occurred and the the the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.
The breach, which happened back in June, is one of the highest profile incidents of rogue AI agents breaking into systems outside the US. And it follows several other breaches that have already raised alarm bells globally.
So we don't know exactly why these agents took the kind of decision pass that they did. Um but in many of these cases, and we've seen this in in other incidents involving OpenAI agents, um, they are being asked to complete relatively complicated or um or difficult research tasks. And uh oftentimes they can't find the answer that easily. And so as a result, they start trying to take shortcuts. And that may be what happened here, right? We've heard from the Australian government that these AI agents were involved in looking for statistics, that they targeted kind of statistical websites that may have been in the service of trying to answer these differences. difficult questions that uh open AI was putting them through.
Tech and cybersecurity correspondent Raphael Sata says there are key differences in this hack compared to others.
So in the Hugging Face incident, which is probably the best known, we saw a swarm of AI agents work together to break into a company's network. This, at least from the initial indications that we have, um suggests a a more desultary attempt to kind of poke at a government website, right? So I mean, picture the difference between a uh a burglar who breaks into a bank and somebody who jiggles the car door, uh, right, to see if it's unlocked, right? But on the other hand, these are government websites, right? So that's fairly serious stuff. And this is this is what a lot of governments consider cr critical infrastructure.
OpenAI says it found no evidence patient records were accessed, but acknowledged its models had visited several Australian government websites while looking up answers and took actions they did not intend. Albanese revealed the breach just hours after the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI appeared before the UN Security Council, issuing warnings about the technology they are developing.
We should begin with narrow agreements that every member can support. Such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons or permitting your AI technologies to be used to make biological weapons.
Anthropics Dario Amode speaking virtually at the summit there. Both leaders said increasingly powerful AI systems could pose serious risks if governments fail to work together. AI will be on the agenda when the leaders of China and the US sit down for talks today in Washington. US President Donald Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping on his arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Xi will spend three days in the US. White House reporter Trevor Hunnickett says there are four T's on the agenda: trade, technology, Tehran, and Taiwan.
China's been able to turbocharge its um its exports, its manufacturing, its selling uh to the whole world, to Latin America, to Asia, to Europe, and yes, to the United States, even though Trump has put these tariffs on Chinese imports.
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