SSL keys are, in the world of computer engineering, the crown jewels of an online enterprise. When you shop, bank or send an email on your computer, you are often unknowingly relying on the protection of SSL encryption. It is almost ubiquitous in 21st-century commerce. Companies such as Apple, Amazon and Gmail use SSL to prove to your computer that they are who they say they are and to protect the information you exchange with them. They are required, by industry standards, to alert the companies that certify their SSL encryption if their keys ever fall into the hands of a third party. When a tiny icon of a padlock appears in your Web browser, it is because the site you are accessing is using SSL to encrypt what you are doing — to make sure that only you and your bank know that you have just deposited your grandmother’s $100 birthday check into your savings account or donated to an activist in the Middle East. Levison’s key would have unlocked everything. - america.aljazeera.com