Matousec and his Firewall Challenges Hall of Shame 2008/2011 Awardee

To me it is a great pleasure to announce that Matousec and his so called Firewall Challenges is Smokey’s Security Weblog 2008/2011 Hall of Shame Awardee. He realy did all he could to become awarded, there was no reason to deny him anymore this prestigious Award. Congratulations Matousec, well deserved!

Let’s take a look at my motivation to grant Matousec the honor to become member of The Hall. In my “almighty” wisdom I even decided that his stay in The Hall will be definitive.

In April 2008 I already blogged about wrinkles in Matousec’s Firewall Challenges. Instead of taking serious notice of my critism, he decided to ignore entirely my prewarnings. That was a bad sign, however I decided to provide him with the advantage of doubt.

Mentioned ignorant attitude in the past and his recent Firewall Challenge were sufficient to provide him with the honorable Smokey’s Security Weblog 2008/2011 Hall of Shame Award.

Recapitulation to Award Matousec:

– Labeling Firewalls, Behavior Blockers and HIPS with the generic label “Firewalls” and testing these programs subsequent with equal (firewall related) test procedures. This is just one of the reasons that his tests are completely unacceptable.
– Matousec demonstrated again and again to produce unreliable tests and being an untrustworthy person. Concerning the latter, I am thinking at his commercial activities related to his tests.

Conclusion: Matousec’s tests are misleading the reader, disadvantaging several vendors in a unacceptable way and his commercial activities in relation to his tests can be labeled as dubious. My advice: stay far away from his so called “tests”. They are not worth the paper they are written on.

Smokey