What we know about the data accessed in the Medicare AI hack

The federal government is demanding answers after an artificial intelligence agent infiltrated a Medicare website, as well as targeting other government sites.

In the breach , OpenAI agents accessed both public and private files as it tried to scoop up data.

The government is stressing nobody's personal Medicare details were accessed, that the research task was largely "benign", and crucially, the impact was minor.

But that doesn't mean it's relaxed about this breach — largely because it could be a harbinger of much worse attacks with vastly more serious consequences.

So what type of information was accessed? What else do we know? And what could this breach tell us about future cyber attacks?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the breach occurred back in June, but OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, only acknowledged the incident had occurred two weeks ago — on September 10.

That happened when the company lobbed an email to an open mailbox maintained by Services Australia — something the prime minister has described as "unacceptable".

Five days later, Services Australia reported the breach to the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

The government is troubled it only found out months after the incident, but more on the timeline a bit later.

The Services Australia portal accessed had publicly-available data about Medicare programs.

It contained bulk billing statistics, immunisation data, Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme statistics, organ donor register information and annual reports.

The data is known as "aggregate" data, which means it doesn't identify individuals, but rather contains generalised information such as averages and trends.

Former health department boss Stephen Duckett told the ABC while the information in the portal is taken from individual services — for example, a GP visit — it's collated in a way where nothing private is revealed.

"This information aggregates the experience of thousands of Australians into numbers that can be used for external policy analysis and understanding how the system is travelling."