# The OpenAI “Hack” Of Australia’s Medicare That Wasn’t

**URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/the-openai-hack-of-australia-s-medicare-that-wasn-t/41036
**Category:** News
**Tags:** article
**Created:** 2026-09-27T02:47:11Z
**Posts:** 2

## Post 1 by @Olly — 2026-09-27T02:47:11Z

Interesting research on this recent news article regarding Australia’s Medicare and OpenAI.

I have checked out the source and it seems legit and quite eye opening in light of the mainstream media coverage and the Australian government take on this event. I have not seen this reported anywhere else but it appears high on the search results, so must be gaining some traction.

Seems well researched. Editor of site has a long history with Australian tech publications so is very believable (IMHO of course).

I suspected that the Australian government was using this as an excuse to bring in even more government control of tech (quite a history there as some would know) and this seems to validate that suspicion.

And the article - [The OpenAI “Hack” Of Australia’s Medicare That Wasn’t](https://smbtech.au/thought-leadership/the-openai-hack-of-australias-medicare-that-wasnt/)

Hopefully you find this as interesting as I did.

Short extract (TLDR) -

> On 24 September 2026, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that an OpenAI AI agent had gained unauthorised access to a government Medicare statistics system on 18 June 2026.
> 
> The reported story: an agent researching public medicine spending was blocked from Australian data, “found a security workaround,” accessed non-public aggregate health statistics and internal file names, and wrote files to the server. No patient records were accessed.
> 
> …
> 
> “Security workaround” makes it sound like a break-in. The archived code tells a different story. **Nobody picked a lock. The gate was open, and it had been open for over ten years.**

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## Post 2 by @privacy.slouchy — 2026-09-27T02:54:22Z

I’m seeing more and more reasonable folks suggest widespread collusion between big tech & government to pass AI regulation: gov gets more control, big tech gets to raise the barrier to entry into the industry

I’m not informed enough to commentate one way or the other, just an interesting discussion I’ve watched unfold over the past week or two