When you think national security, Chuck Norris may not be your first thought, but you might be arrested for saying "Chuck Norris" on a plane. When thinking about unorthodox approaches to law enforcement, Norris still might not immediately jump to mind, but when Chuck Norris goes to the airport, TSA agents grope themselves. All of this is because Chuck Norris, the famous actor and martial arts expert who played a Texas Ranger on TV, is to officially be named as an Honorary Texas Ranger.
According to CNN, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will present a commemorative certificate to Norris in honor of his work on the 1993 to 2001 TV series 'Walker, Texas Ranger.' Although not all Texas Rangers might deliver a roundhouse kick when needed, the Texas Rangers' website states that they lead investigations into crime, public corruption, shootings involving officers, and border security operations.
Chuck Norris is more than a meme, he's the future of Android devices. Android and Me reported on the upcoming "Chuck Norris quad-core processors" in Androids. Both the good guys and the bad guys seem to love him.
How awesome or how terrible a situation is, it can be put into perspective by bringing Chuck Norris into the equation. For example, according to The Register, CSRF (cross site request forgery) proof of concept attacks that targeted users of Hulu, Netflix and Tivo employed Chuck Norris tactics, "used the same oft-repeated tactic used in Chuck Norris movies, where the protagonist breaches his enemy's well-fortified compound by hiding himself under the chassis of a trusted vehicle as it enters. In much the same way, CSRFs are able to trick websites into executing unauthorized commands by exploiting the trust they have for the user."
Chuck Norris never needs a flashlight, he just stares into the darkness and it moves out of the way. This or other Chuck Norris fun facts, may have lulled Facebook into a feeling of security by allegedly using a form of Chuck Norris' name as the universal master password which allowed any Facebook employee to log into any user's profile. Sophos Security suggested it might have been in a form similar to "{hu[k N0rr15" but if the claim by the anonymous Facebook employee were true at one point, "Chuck Norris can no longer log into your Facebook account."
Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding, but the bad guys can't seem to get enough of him. Chuck Norris spamdexing was spotted this summer. According to The Security Blog, the spambot application used the string "Chuck Norris" (mostly in Polish) to boost a site's search engine ranking. "It is used to poison search results and tricks the search engine into ranking a site high in the search result list." The app could highlight keywords, harvest e-mail addresses, automate clicking and crawl sites to drive traffic.
Trying to "find Chuck Norris" with Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is one of the best Google Easter eggs. The result, in bold red, reads "Google won't search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don't find Chuck Norris, he finds you." Suggestions for what to do next include, "Run, before he finds you."
Perhaps cybercrooks can't help themselves from being drawn to Chuck Norris. Or perhaps they don't know that "When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris." This time Sophos Security reported that old heroes don't die, they live on in malware such as a virus writer leaving a trojan signed as copyrighted by Chuck Norris, or the below message as seen when debugging malware.
As a whole, we don't hear much about malware that embeds itself in wireless routers. Picking the name "Psybot" a year earlier for the router botnet must not have received enough security media coverage attention because when Czech security researchers rediscovered and renamed the botnet as Chuck Norris, lots of people sat up and took notice. ComputerWorld warned users to change the default password on home routers and DSL modems or Chuck Norris might. The worm was renamed after researchers found a comment in the malware code, "In nome di Chuck Norris," Italian for "in the name of Chuck Norris." The worm-like piece of malware infected poorly configured routers and DSL modems. The infected devices could form a botnet to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Or, as The Register wrote, "Chuck Norris botnet doesn't infect routers...it stares them down until they infect themselves."