Snowden lifts veil on code-breaking US and UK intelligence agencies have targeted widely used methods of encrypting information on the internet, according to the latest leaks by the renegade former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures suggest that the agencies have in some cases succeeded in breaking common internet security technologies to read email communications or other data of both companies and individuals, according to computer security experts. Breaking codes has been a well-established part of the mission of both the US's National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ. It was widely assumed in computer security circles that the agencies had found ways to penetrate secure online traffic. "The fact that they're working on breaking encryption is not surprising," said Chris Eng, vice-president of research at Veracode, a security technology company. We know that the NSA is one of the largest employers of cryptanalysts in the world. The latest Snowden leaks, however, are among the first to confirm the agencies" actions and lift the veil on some of the methods they have used to attack encryption technologies that lie at the heart of internet banking, commerce and communications. The details were published simultaneously by The Guardian, which obtained the leaked documents, and The New York Times and ProPublica, with which it recently started sharing its Snowden leaks. "There are some things being revealed that were previously thought to be off-limits, if not for technical reasons then for legal and ethical ones," said Paul Kocher, chief scientist at Cryptography Research, an encryption company. According to the latest reports, the intelligence agencies have hacked into the systems of some private companies and taken the security "keys" that enable them to unscramble future communications. Breaking into the systems of US companies raised questions about whether the NSA had overreached its powers, Mr Kocher said. Other techniques have included planting "back doors" in computer systems, or secret entrances that are unknown to the system's owners but can be used to gain access by the intelligence agencies. The use of back doors is highly controversial in the security world, since vulnerabilities deliberately planted in widely used technology can also be used by others, exposing systems to penetration from other governments or criminals. Mr Kocher said that nothing in the latest Snowden revelations had proved that western intelligence services had created these kinds of widespread vulnerabilities. The back doors were either highly targeted ones or, like the one involving a technology standard over which the NSA had considerable influence, would only have given the power to break in to the US agency, he added. The lack of detail about which encryption technologies the agencies had been able to crack meant that it was impossible for companies or individuals to protect themselves by avoiding the most vulnerable technologies, said Mr Eng.