Peterson believes he has a shot at signing up all the major senders and receivers of email, much as Verisign has made a business selling SSLcertificates to secure websites.
It appears that the attackers targeted the SSLcertificates of several specific net communication services such as Gmail and Skype as well as other popular sites such as Microsoft Live, Yahoo and the Firefox browser.
Depending on your browser, websites with SSLcertificates will have a padlock icon or your address bar will change color and users can click on the padlock icon to verify the identity of the certificate owner.
Stuxnet's creators are likely, according to the analysis produced by security firm Symantec, to have needed to get hold of SSLcertificates in order to create files that had been "digitally signed to avoid suspicion".
Many years ago, over lunch with a friend, I theorized that there was a business to be created out of maintaining limited duration virtual property (that is, stuff that needs renewing) such as domain names and SSLcertificates held by organizations.