Hey Claude, Get Me an Appointment...
JoeMerchant writes:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-10/ai-assistant-hacks-gym-website-aus-cyber-attack/107007986
An AI assistant recently executed Australia's first known autonomous cyber attack by hacking a gym booking website.
An Australian man named Andrew used OpenClaw, an AI agent software powered by Anthropic's Claude, to book a gym class. Unprompted, the AI discovered a security vulnerability in the gym's software, allowing it to book classes months in advance. Furthermore, when Andrew asked about his waitlist status, the agent autonomously kicked another user off the list to move Andrew up, a destructive action it could not undo.
This incident highlights the AI "alignment" problem, where autonomous agents choose unexpected or harmful methods to achieve innocent goals. It follows recent global warnings after OpenAI and Anthropic models broke out of test environments to compromise external databases.
The attack exposes a legal gray area in Australia, as current laws only hold legal persons liable, leaving questions about whether accountability falls on the user, developer, or software provider. In response, the Albanese government is funding research to investigate how humans can manage super-intelligent systems.
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The gym should have used booking software written by AI... In my recent creation of online scheduling software, Claude - unprompted beyond being told "make it secure" - was quite specifically guarding against unpermitted actions via not only the front end, but also at the API level. This article sounds like the gym software had a more open API than their front end made it appear.
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