New FreeBSD Security Officer

[Jacques Vidrine]

Hello Everyone!

It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve as the FreeBSD  
Security Officer for the past 3+ years.  With the crucial support of  
the FreeBSD Security Team members, a lot has been accomplished:  
hundreds of security issues have been researched and tracked, with  
some resulting in security advisories and patches;  software in the  
Ports Collection are updated more quickly to remove vulnerabilities;   
flaws are well-documented in the Vulnerabilities and Exposures Markup  
Language (VuXML); communication with other software and hardware  
vendors, security researchers, and emergency response organizations  
has grown greatly;  and the FreeBSD Security Branches are now  
supported for much longer period of time over a greater number of  
releases.  I'd like to thank the members of the security team over  
the past few years for these accomplishments:  Eivind Eklund, Julian  
Elischer, Chris Faulhaber, Bill Fumerola, Daniel Harris, Trevor  
Johnson, Remko Lodder, Simon Nielsen, Christian Peron, Wes Peters,  
Josef El-Rayes, Tom Rhodes, Gregory Shapiro, Bruce Simpson, Dag- 
Erling Smørgrav, and Robert Watson.  Several of our previous security  
officers have also given much help: Kris Kennaway, Warner Losh, and  
Guido van Rooij.

I asked the FreeBSD Core Team to offer the security officer role to  
Colin Percival, and I am happy to say that they agreed and that Colin  
accepted.  Colin has been a FreeBSD committer since January 2004, and  
has been an energetic member of the FreeBSD Security Team for most of  
that time.  He is well-known for his software creations "FreeBSD  
Update", "portsnap", and "bsdiff"; as well as his paper published  
earlier this year, "Cache Missing for Fun and Profit" <URL:http:// 
www.daemonology.net/papers/htt.pdf>.  I have no doubt that he will do  
an outstanding job fulfilling the FreeBSD Security Officer's charter.

Thanks for everyone's support over the years, and please extend the  
same and more for Colin!  Cheers,
-- 
Jacques Vidrine <nectar at FreeBSD.org>