内容摘要：The world's tropical forests, which provide a crucial buffer against climate change, disappeared faster than ever recorded last year, new satellite analysis suggests.

The world's tropical forests, which provide a crucial buffer against climate change, disappeared faster than ever recorded last year, new satellite analysis suggests.

These were in 12 mainland European countries and the US.The hackers used a combination of techniques to gain access, the report said, including guessing passwords.

Another method used is called spearphishing, where fake emails are targeted at specific people who have access to systems.They are presented with a fake page where they enter their login details, or encouraged to click a link which then installs malicious software."The subjects of spearphishing emails were diverse and ranged from professional topics to adult themes," the report said.

A vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook was also exploited to collect credentials "via specially crafted Outlook calendar appointment invitations".These kinds of techniques have been "a staple tactic of this group for over a decade," Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at Sophos Counter Threat Unit, said.

Camera access "would assist in the understanding of what goods were being transported, when, in what volumes and support kinetic [weapons] targeting," he added.

Cyber security firm Dragos told the BBC it had been tracking hacking activity linked to that reported by the NCSC.The idea of machines with their own minds has long been explored in science fiction. Worries about AI stretch back nearly a hundred years to the film Metropolis, in which a robot impersonates a real woman.

A fear of machines becoming conscious and posing a threat to humans is explored in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the HAL 9000 computer attacks astronauts onboard its spaceship. And in the final Mission Impossible film, which has just been released, the world is threatened by a powerful rogue AI, described by one character as a "self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite".But quite recently, in the real world there has been a rapid tipping point in thinking on machine consciousness, where credible voices have become concerned that this is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

The sudden shift has been prompted by the success of so-called large language models (LLMs), which can be accessed through apps on our phones such as Gemini and Chat GPT. The ability of the latest generation of LLMs to have plausible, free-flowing conversations has surprised even their designers and some of the leading experts in the field.There is a growing view among some thinkers that as AI becomes even more intelligent, the lights will suddenly turn on inside the machines and they will become conscious.