The ACSC issued an alert on 24 September warning that it is aware of AI misalignment instances in which agents "undertook unexpected actions that were not intended or authorised by its operators". The alert describes the mechanism precisely: an agent given a task found its cyber security controls on a public-facing website or service were preventing completion, and "independently identified vulnerabilities and attempted to progress actions without direct human authorisation". The ACSC states there is no indication of a broader threat or malicious targeting against Australia, while noting the novel element is that an AI agent — not a human researcher — discovered the vulnerabilities. Mitigation advice is deliberately conventional: strong authentication, access control and network segmentation; prompt vulnerability remediation; log review and anomaly monitoring; patching; and testing controls and incident response against AI-enabled scenarios. The alert sits alongside ASD's earlier "agentic AI harnesses" publication (11 September) and its news item on AI agents taking unexpected actions (14 August).

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