The certificates are important, he said, because secure use of web shops and other services revolve around interaction between the "master keys" and the lower level security credentials.
Instead of issuing low level certificates it mistakenly gave out what amounted to "master keys" which could have allowed a bogus site to pretend it was the legitimate version without triggering a warning.
As for those shortcuts, you only need to remember three keys before you can consider yourself a master: Delete, Insert and the squiggly line that sits below the Esc. key.