Cybersecurity funds should go towards beefing up Centrelink voice authentication, Greens say

The federal government should be using some of the $10bn allocated in the budget to cybersecurity defences to combat people using AI to bypass biometric securities including voice authentication, a Greens senator has said. On Friday Guardian Australia reported that Centrelink's voice authentication system can be tricked using a free online AI cloning service and just four minutes of audio of the user's voice. After the Guardian Australia journalist Nick Evershed cloned his own voice, he was able to access his account using his cloned voice and his customer reference number. The voiceprint service, provided by the Microsoft-owned voice software company Nuance, was being used by 3.8 million Centrelink clients at the end of February, and more than 7.1 million people had verified their voice using the same system with the Australian Taxation Office. Despite being alerted to the vulnerability last week, Services Australia has not indicated it will change its use of voice ID, saying the technology is a "highly secure authentication method" and the agency "continually scans for potential threats and make ongoing enhancements to ensure customer security".